Out of curiousity, I just looked at some statistics for religious belief in the world. According to this site http://www.religioustolerance.org/worldrel.htm, which looks fairly believable, atheists and those with no expressed religion only account for 16% of the world population, while a staggering 84% (or around 5.1 billion individuals by my calculations) follow a defined religion. That just struck me as quite a lot, is the UK a particularly unreligious place?

That also seems quite insane to me. I had assumed logical thought to be a natural ability of humanity... but maybe the desire to create gods and look for a greater meaning in life, imaginary or not, is also innate. Well, looking at the number of different deities that have been created, there is certainly a predisposition to assign unexplained events to a mythological/theistic system... and being able to fit into an established system maybe lends it weight in some sense, as well as establishing a tribal identity for the individual.

Obviously not all religions can be right as they're directly contradictory to each other, as well as to what we now know of reality (the major religions, at least). There's also no logical reason to assume that any one religion is more right than any other as none of them are supported by observable facts. The only logical conclusion therefore is that they are all creations of natural, primitive human psychology.

Why then are people - 84% of people - so prepared to believe in something that can be ascertained rationally to be false just by looking at a few basic facts e.g. the number of religions? Is this just because only a very small percentage of people have the ability to think to even this basic level? Or is the security that comes from a religious community providing a further tie to racially and culturally similar individuals enough benefit for people to ignore the obvious? A lot of it must come from the herd psychology, fitting in to a chosen group so that they have a reason to support you. This of course has the unfortunate effect of creating strong ties between those with one belief, while creating a further divide between those with disparate beliefs - the effect of which can be counted in bodies throughout history and to the present date.

There are surprisingly few studies linking education level or IQ with religious belief. Looks like a niche, might make a good summer project. All I could find was this, really http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v394/n6691/full/394313a0_fs.html (given this letter as it's better than the abstract of the actual study, but the study itself is referenced and linked (ref.3)). This shows a negative correlation between pure scientific education / ability and religious belief. Maybe other subjects don't fit into this so well because the areas learned in e.g. social science focus on human interaction and students don't learn any of the natural laws or facts that contradict religion, or at least not as many as physicists or evolutionary biologists do, for example. http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2006/04/education_and_r.html this is also interesting.

Perhaps they're all correct, and only 16% of people lack the necessary vision to appreciate the obvious (to everyone without the mental deficiency) existence of a godhead.

Quickly hanging my Moderator hat on the peg.... :)

I admit it, I believe in God.

It's a private thing for me - I have a scientific education, two degrees, work in a field where logical thinking is essential and like to think that I can ahold my own in most debates.

My religious faith is an issue between me and God; that's it. It's not tying me to anything culturally, it's not soemthing foisted on me as a child, I was not indictrinated in to it by anyone. It just happened.

It's a belief that I'm comfortable with, just as I'm comfortable with people who feel no need for any spiritual belief in their life. It's horses for courses, so to say.

What I DO find interesting is the number of people who seem to spend a great deal of time and energy trying to talk me out of it. Religious warfare hasn't accounted for that many people in the last 150 - possibly 200 years, unless you consider the 'secular religions' of Fascism and Communism, overly agressive nationlsim and Imperialism.

Crayfish - I respect your beliefs and views - it does indeed take all sorts to make a world. A question I have to ask, though, is why is it necessary for people who don't believe in the Christian or Jewish God, Allah, the Buddha, the Hindu Pantheon (I think that covers the vast majority of religious believers) to denigrate and disrespect those who do by basically accusing them of illogical, wooly thinking, herd mentality, and other aberrant thinking?

It seems that there is an intellectual arrogance and bigotry there that is just as pronounced as religious bigotries.

I think it has more to do with society and upbringing than intelligence or capacity for logical thought. The UK is a less close-knit society than many other countries, so there are less social pressures upon anyone to conform to the norm. Plus in countries with Sharia law, abandoning your religion is punishable by death.

Even 50 years ago, the situation in the UK was very different, and I imagine other societies may become more atheist as (and if) their populations become more fluid.

Perhaps they're all correct, and only 16% of people lack the necessary vision to appreciate the obvious (to everyone without the mental deficiency) existence of a godhead.

Yes, that would be a further possibility. Incidentally, I am technically a Deist by a very loose definition in that I believe that there is an underlying cause for everything, but would consider myself an atheist in that I don't choose to anthropomorphise this belief.

The thing is, they can't all be correct - the views of the major theistic beliefs are directly contradictory. If it was a case of 84% of people believing in one thing and one thing alone I might be more inclined to believe there was some weight behind it.

Religious warfare hasn't accounted for that many people in the last 150 - possibly 200 years

Do you think Bush's religious beliefs had no bearing on his decision to invade Iraq? What about suicide bombers and the 9/11 attacks - were/are they not largely religiously motivated? Or at least the underlying justification for them is - would people who weren't going to an afterlife with 1000 virgins be so prepared to put their lives on the line? What about the repression of women in many cultures for religious reasons, would this be so universally tolerated and enforced if the respective deity hadn't told them it should be so?

basically accusing them of illogical, wooly thinking, herd mentality, and other aberrant thinking?

I'm not necessarily accusing religious people of aberrant thinking as technically, herd mentality is a natural survival trait - logical thought that for example brings someone to believe things that 84% of the world do not is more aberrant. However, religion is inherently illogical, there's simply no way around that - I feel quite justified in that accusation.

Many countries require people to register on censuses etc, an alignment to a faith. The 'no faith' box is not an option.

Countries such as Russia, Indonesia (large populations) are examples.

This would account for a shortage of non-believers.

What are you if you absolutely know you dont believe in anything god like at all? If you think its just nature and stuff?

Yes, that would be a further possibility....

The thing is, they can't all be correct - the views of the major theistic beliefs are directly contradictory. If it was a case of 84% of people believing in one thing and one thing alone I might be more inclined to believe there was some weight behind it.

That one thing alone being 'the existence of a God'

Why can't they all be correct? Just worshipping different aspects of the divinity. They all have a lot more in common with each other than with the areligious brigade. After all you'd have to be superhuman to understand and revere all aspects of the deity.

What are you if you absolutely know you dont believe in anything god like at all? If you think its just nature and stuff?
a Vitalist IMO

Thanks for that CGK, that would explain it a little - looking around at people I know, those with religion are in the extreme minority. Could be a local phenomenon or an artifact of the social circles I move in though.

Kathy - Deicism can be defined absolutely as the belief that percieved events are caused by underlying laws. I believe that there are natural laws governing the universe we live in (possibly ultimately created by interactions between subatomic particles), so I'm an athiestic deist. I suppose an adeist might believe that percieved events are unlinked to any other phenomenon, and simply exist of their own accord. Think it's the sort of thing where you have to work out your own stance though.

That one thing alone being 'the existence of a God'

Why can't they all be correct? Just worshipping different aspects of the divinity. They all have a lot more in common with each other than with the areligious brigade. After all you'd have to be superhuman to understand and revere all aspects of the deity.

Because:

A) Hinduism is polytheistic and does not revere a single divinity, as is the case with many other more minor religions.

B) I'm debating here primarily against theistic beliefs, if a person feels it necessary to ascribe themselves to either Christianity or Islam (for example), then even though those religions both ultimately worship the same deity that person is acknowledging a belief in the Christian or Islamic theistic system e.g. the word of the Bible or Koran, to the exclusion of believing in the opposing system. And that's where rationality departs.

Think it's the sort of thing where you have to work out your own stance though.

Oh right, in that case I am a committed infidel :hihi:

Crayfish - I think the Iraq business is more to do with the religion of Oil than anything else.

And the use of suicide bombings, whilst associated with extreme Islam, was also carried out in WW2 by Japanese soldiers (against tanks) and pilots (against ships), effectively by the Chinese Communists in Korea with 'human wave' attacks in which thousands would charge defended positions to simply force the defenders to run out of ammunition, by Russian and German 'Punishment Batallions' who would be thrown in to battles against almost impossible odds and keep being pushed forward until they were all dead. Only the Japanese adherents of 'Shinto' here would be religious. Dying for one's cause is available to secular movements as well as religions, but there it's called patriotism.

Hmm. Good points. Well, I'm not in favour of anything that separates us into tribes and gives a reason for tribal warfare - religion isn't always the cause of this. Personally think a benign world dictatorship (Henry Moore, preferably) would be the ideal scenario, a lot more would be done for the good of humanity without having to worry about spending ridiculous amounts defending against / attacking other nations with other beliefs (religious, political or cultural). Not going to happen any time soon of course, and I can think of various logistic problems if it were to come about.

Because:

A) Hinduism is polytheistic and does not revere a single divinity, as is the case with many other more minor religions.

B) I'm debating here primarily against theistic beliefs, if a person feels it necessary to ascribe themselves to either Christianity or Islam (for example), then even though those religions both ultimately worship the same deity that person is acknowledging a belief in the Christian or Islamic theistic system e.g. the word of the Bible or Koran, to the exclusion of believing in the opposing system. And that's where rationality departs.

a)maybe the hindus have a better idea of what is going on - their divinities are aspects, or indeed avatars, of the all encompassing deity.

b)given the perfect nature the deity, it's not surprising that imperfect humans make a hash of understanding it and incorporating it for other purposes into their own poorly sublimated animal desires for dominance.

Yep, point B is exactly what I'm talking about here. If the whole world believed in one all-encompassing deity they'd probably be a lot more friendly towards each other.

There is also no rational justification for any theism, while there is no disproof for a deity. What I'm surprised by is that 84% of the world (according to those statistics, as CGK pointed out they may well be flawed) subscribe to irrational theistic systems. Striving towards a greater understanding of the universe is central to my personal philosophy, and it seems bizzare that people are prepared to sit by with an imperfect understanding, or even one significantly lower than that which they could potentially achieve - I think that theistic systems are in one part a reason to not understand what's actually going on, and in another part something that a greater understanding would for many people prohibit the belief of.

I think a) is also an answer to your point. The world's oldest religion has the most insight into the nature of the deity (many facets of one godhead).

I don't believe that humans are rational, even if they invented the concept.

But neither are 85% of them blind to a higher power, even if their reaction to the obvious existence of a deity turns them against one another. They may be wrong in turning against one another, but you stil haven't shown they are wrong to believe in a deity.

It's not a question of rationality. To some people it is blindingly obvious that the whole universe is a put up job.

The rest of us are left with the somewhat circular anthropic principle with which to understand our existence, and from which to derive a morality.

It occured to me watching the TV last night, that all these 'natural disasters' happen in areas with high Islamic populations? Perhaps god is trying to tell them something?

I think the 'atheistic' attidude you talk about is actually a particularly british thing. I've lived with people from all over europe and they all had a more overtly religious culture than we do.

I think that (only half jokingly) it can be traced back to a single event. The banning of the festivities of christmas by the puritans of cromwells government. If that isnt enough to turn a nation against the bible-thumping true believers for the rest of time...

theres a lot of stupid, gullible people about who have to believe in something, who cant believe in themselves
as the old saying goes "there is no god in heaven, so get off your knees"

Out of curiousity, I just looked at some statistics for religious belief in the world. According to this site http://www.religioustolerance.org/worldrel.htm, which looks fairly believable, atheists and those with no expressed religion only account for 16% of the world population, while a staggering 84% (or around 5.1 billion individuals by my calculations) follow a defined religion. That just struck me as quite a lot, is the UK a particularly unreligious place?

That also seems quite insane to me. I had assumed logical thought to be a natural ability of humanity... but maybe the desire to create gods and look for a greater meaning in life, imaginary or not, is also innate. Well, looking at the number of different deities that have been created, there is certainly a predisposition to assign unexplained events to a mythological/theistic system... and being able to fit into an established system maybe lends it weight in some sense, as well as establishing a tribal identity for the individual.

Obviously not all religions can be right as they're directly contradictory to each other, as well as to what we now know of reality (the major religions, at least). There's also no logical reason to assume that any one religion is more right than any other as none of them are supported by observable facts. The only logical conclusion therefore is that they are all creations of natural, primitive human psychology.

Why then are people - 84% of people - so prepared to believe in something that can be ascertained rationally to be false just by looking at a few basic facts e.g. the number of religions? Is this just because only a very small percentage of people have the ability to think to even this basic level? Or is the security that comes from a religious community providing a further tie to racially and culturally similar individuals enough benefit for people to ignore the obvious? A lot of it must come from the herd psychology, fitting in to a chosen group so that they have a reason to support you. This of course has the unfortunate effect of creating strong ties between those with one belief, while creating a further divide between those with disparate beliefs - the effect of which can be counted in bodies throughout history and to the present date.

But neither are 85% of them blind to a higher power, even if their reaction to the obvious existence of a deity turns them against one another. They may be wrong in turning against one another, but you stil haven't shown they are wrong to believe in a deity.

It's not a question of rationality. To some people it is blindingly obvious that the whole universe is a put up job.

The rest of us are left with the somewhat circular anthropic principle with which to understand our existence, and from which to derive a morality.

I don't believe it is wrong to believe in a deity, in the true sense of the word I myself believe in a deity, this is entirely rational - even with slightly looser definitions, that is something that cannot be proven one way or another and where no evidence exists any suggestion at all has equal probability and merit. What I do think is wrong is belief in theistical systems that, if strictly adhered to, force believers to actively ignore or deny reality and observable facts (and if not strictly adhered to, why go halfway into lunacy?). It is the belief in the trappings of theism, not the belief in a deity that turns people against each other. Theistic mythologies are also purely the (generally outdated) inventions of mankind, and are entirely unsupportable and irrational.

As for Hinduism, no I don't believe that they have it any more right than anyone else, I don't think that the deity is an elephant or rather several creatures any more than I think he is a beardy old bloke. Taking something which defies comprehension and attaching random humanising descriptive terms and stories to it defies logic utterly, and yet it is exactly this part and the differences thereof that causes the trouble and strife associated with religion.

Even those with a sort of partial or modern version of their religion still cast themselves fully into their tribal grouping - some people say 'ah yes well I believe in God but I don't follow the literal word of the Bible'. But they that say they are Christian, and would probably be offended if I suggested that the God they believe in may be Allah (even though technically the same thing). If the entire level of your belief is that you believe there is a God, why not be a partial Muslim or partial Buddhist? Surely if that is the only part of the belief system you subscribe to then in fact you are subscribing to all religions equally, or (one and the same thing) none at all.

I was a TV engineer for 41 years and you have to be logical when you are fault finding. But sometimes you can be ‘driven’ to do something that isn’t logical, whether it is to climb Mount Everest, rebuild a vintage car, run a marathon or whatever, the motivation is there and I have never understood where this driving force comes from but I do think that some of the illogical things we do are what provides us with the fun in our lives? If we think about everything logically then we wouldn’t risk life and limb to go sky-diving or bungee-jumping for example, but we do it because we want to. Perhaps we are driven to ‘find’ God in a similar way but like sky-diving our intellect can get in the way and logic can tell us ‘no’ but sometimes we need to follow our heart in the first instance and that is hard to rationalise. However there are lots of people who will tell you they find intellectual stimulation in theology and the study of the word of God although that may not appeal to the scientist who likes to measure and pigeon hole everything whereas an artist for example is interested in the aesthetic which is not so easily measured, and perhaps when we talk about a belief in God we may be talking about a different discipline that may not come naturally to the scientifically minded and that may be a hurdle that needs to be jumped? Just a thought.

there are major religions that recognise no godhead phan, shintoism, buddism, confuscism etc...

kathy - someone who does not believe in the existance of any form of deity would be an aetheist.

What are you if you absolutely know you dont believe in anything god like at all? If you think its just nature and stuff?
I come into contact with a lot of ‘pagans’ they worship the seasons and the harvest and that sort of thing, I’m not into it myself, and then you can Google ‘wicca’ and see what you get, but I think it best not to go down either of those roads, although now I have said that, no doubt you will. I like to look at nature and say, "Thank you God," but that's just the way I am.

there are major religions that recognise no godhead phan, shintoism, buddism, confuscism etc...

Buddhism and Confucianism are arguably closer to being philosophies or ethical frameworks than religions. Shinto on the other hand is a mix of animistic and ancestor worship which has been hammered into a single religion. It differs from most other religions in having no specified founder or religious text.

My personal belief is that all religions are simply different ways of looking at the same thing - beyond the cultural window dressing I don't see a great deal of difference between most of the major religions. Even when it comes to monotheistic versus pantheistic religions, most if not all of the monotheistic religions have their own armies of saints and angels which seem to corespond to the pantheistic view of (typically) uber-god and many other gods for specific tasks. Although I was brought up in the Roman Catholic tradition I don't subscribe to any religion (as far as I can see they only get in the way!) though I do believe in a deity in the sense of a creative force rather than a paternalistic bloke in the sky with a long white beard! However these are my beliefs and I don't force them on anyone else and in the same way I feel that everyone should be freely entitled to their own beliefs - or lack thereof!

Who or what created everything, or anthing?

Some people say the big bang others say a god? Most people say a god, or an unknown difficult to explain entity.
Because if you have your big bang, what sparked it off ? The big bang needs more than one process coming together ie something to go bang and an igniter.

Where did they come from? . . . a god possibly!

It is more believable , and easier to say the whole process came about by something mere mortals cannot begin to explain , hence a god!

So it is not really difficult to see why people want to think that there is more to it than...life death nothing.

We are not gods just humans but we are like gods to other lifeforms: animals plants. We cultivate and change plantlife. We breed and crossbreed animals.
These life forms do not have the intelligence that we have, they do not worship us, admittedly some pets can be very loyal.

We have the power to think creatively so it is easy to see why a lot of us believe in the supreme creator.
It can , and has been a very positive uplifting creative influence. Many great people: artists, inventors leaders thinkers have believed themselves to have been inspired by the almighty, mind you probably just as many do not.

Many of those without belief nor hope of an after life have been depressed and ended their own lives prematurely. So have some believers!
The species (man) must continue, the need to procreate is within practically every human so may be, believing in an afterlife is a base from where religion springs, as it helps us go on in this life, possibly.

There's no evidence of what happened before the big bang as far as I know (not a physicist) - so any hypothesis at all, be it god, fairies or intelligent bits of glitter with tiny little midget legs is equally likely. But what we can't define we shouldn't try to... Even the word entity isn't supportable, process or system may well be a better way to describe the basis of the universe and its laws.

A lot of creative good has been done for religious reasons or supported by religion, this is true. Would have to wonder if that would have happened without religion being around. Maybe, maybe not.

the whole concept of 'before' is kinda mute if you're talking about the begining of time. It's a concept that we can't really get our heads around, we're trapped in a causal universe, time flows one way and so that's the way our heads are wired.
Neither theory actually purports to explain the origin though, on one hand you have what came 'before' the big bang, and on the other you have to ask, where or how came into existence god, what was before god?
Neither question can have an answer (as I understand it).

Personally, at this time of night, i'm supporting the shiny bits of gltter, probably all drunk or something.

It occured to me watching the TV last night, that all these 'natural disasters' happen in areas with high Islamic populations? Perhaps god is trying to tell them something?
Yeah, God really showed all the mullahs of New Orleans, didn't he? :rolleyes:

there are major religions that recognise no godhead phan, shintoism, buddism, confuscism etc...
I think I'm gonna become a Confusionist.

Personally, at this time of night, i'm supporting the shiny bits of gltter, probably all drunk or something.


So beer is the reason for everything after all? :)

I agree with much of what you say Think - I believe that each persons journey is far too personal to be categorised simply into one religion. By blindly following someone else's precepts, those following defined religions preclude the possibility of ever developing their own views and truly realising who they themselves are and their place in the Universe.

Beer is the cause of, and the solution to, all of man kinds problems - Homer Simpson.

Now there speaks a true prophet

What I DO find interesting is the number of people who seem to spend a great deal of time and energy trying to talk me out of it.
Not half as much as people like Grahame spend trying to talk us into it!
Why is it necessary for people who don't believe in the Christian or Jewish God, Allah, the Buddha, the Hindu Pantheon (I think that covers the vast majority of religious believers) to denigrate and disrespect those who do by basically accusing them of illogical, wooly thinking, herd mentality, and other aberrant thinking?

Oh, so many reasons! Apart from the obvious one that we believe they are guilty of those things, I think the most serious reason is that so many religions have been bastions of bigotry and hatred down the centuries.

And anyway, speaking personally, I think it's more a question of criticism of ideologies, rather than 'denigration and disrespect' of people.

Also, speaking personally, I certainly wouldn't include Buddhism as an object of criticism - as I've said elsewhere, Buddhism seems to me to be quite compatible with humanism (and with the mainstream of western science and philosophy in general). Hinduism also seems a relatively benign religion, at least in theory (though there are of course some violent Hindu fundamentalists out there).

I am not a religious person. I can't keep my face straight when they do all the splashing of water, burning incence or repeating things from a book. That doesn't mean that I don't see the importance of an established church, but we shouldn't confuse using chruches to mark important social and cultural occasions, with religion.

As with most things, it seems you "have" to be in one of two camps, where you either believe in God or you believe science can answer everything. I don't believe in God in the traditional sense, but I find many scientific explanations to be ridiculous. We have come to the point in our society where certain scienfific theories are taken on faith by the majority of the population and those that still treat them as theories are treated as heretics. In my case, I see massive gaps in the theory of evolution and cannot see how a human mind that can produce the works of Shakespeare can have started as a single cell organism and simply evolved by "accident". Because I think the theory of evolution is partly correct but mostly rubbish, I am lumped in with those people who think that the bible is completely historically correct. I don't believe either version, but I find it easier to believe that God created Adam, than I do to believe that we evolved by accident.

Also, speaking personally, I certainly wouldn't include Buddhism as an object of criticism - as I've said elsewhere, Buddhism seems to me to be quite compatible with humanism (and with the mainstream of western science and philosophy in general). Hinduism also seems a relatively benign religion, at least in theory (though there are of course some violent Hindu fundamentalists out there).
Don't forget, Hindus are the most prolific suicide bombers active in the world today, although their reasons are political rather than religious (but notions of karma and reincarnation may make Hindus more willing suicide bombers).

As for Buddhists, the protocols of Buddhism (Zen/Chen in particular) are relatively compatible with humanist and even atheist world views, but I've spent extended periods at Buddhist monastries and, from what I have seen, certain Buddhist sects are concerned with little more than worshiping gold statues and denying oneself anything which too closely resembles pleasure.

I consider myself an atheist, not because I consider the existence of God a complete impossibility, but because I consider it an unlikelihood, an irrelevance and, for many people, an obstruction to better living and cooperation. But, like you say, I have no argument with individuals, only with ideologies.

We have come to the point in our society where certain scienfific theories are taken on faith by the majority of the population and those that still treat them as theories are treated as heretics.
When any individual scientific theory becomes an ideology then you are right, it is just as potentially dangerous as any religious ideology. I guess you could say I have a problem not with religion per se but with inflexibility. Unfortunately most religions (Buddhism is a big exception, but again is not always taught this way) do not encourage questioning of their fixed teachings (in fact Islam does not even allow that a single word may be altered as the Koran comes directly from the mouth of God).

In my case, I see massive gaps in the theory of evolution and cannot see how a human mind that can produce the works of Shakespeare can have started as a single cell organism and simply evolved by "accident".
Then you have misunderstood the theory of evolution, as nothing evolves by accident. Richard Dawkins' book "The Blind Watchmaker" is a really excellent introduction to the theory of evolution and to misconceptions such as this one.

Responding to Ken's post.

One difference between science and religion is that anybody, given the time and energy, and possibly other resources, can decide for themselves whether a given scientific explanation is likely to be true or not. Anybody can, in principle, do the experiments or work through the theory, and see whether the experiments work or the theory holds together.

In practice, of course, nobody has the time and energy to go into that amount of depth for anything but a tiny fraction of science, and so we have to take a lot of it on trust (accepting that we would get the same results if we did the experiments, etc), which is a very different thing from accepting things on faith. I guess that the bits to study deeply are the ones that you find intuitively implausible, as you have done with regard to evolution. Personally, I haven't studied evolution in that amount of depth because I do find it intuitively plausible.

But I fully agree that some people do accept scientific explanations as a matter of faith.

Another difference between science and religion is that science doesn't claim to have an explanation for everything. I think that most thoughtful scientists, if confronted by something for which they don't have an explanation, would say "I can't explain that" (rather than uttering some meaningless syllables purporting to be an explanation, which is what religions tend to do in the same situation ).

A third difference is that scientific explanations can be revised or changed, if there is enough evidence to justify doing this. Any given scientific theory is (in the last analysis) just the best explanation available at any time - not the last word on the matter.

certain Buddhist sects are concerned with little more than worshiping gold statues and denying oneself anything which too closely resembles pleasure.
Well that's true, I've also been to Buddhist prayer meetings where the priest was trying to claim miracles on behalf of the religion. But I still find the basic philosophy easier to get to grips with than monotheism. The idea, for instance, that suffering is to be relieved, rather than explained away.

Responding to Ken's post.

One difference between science and religion is that anybody, given the time and energy, and possibly other resources, can decide for themselves whether a given scientific explanation is likely to be true or not. Anybody can, in principle, do the experiments or work through the theory, and see whether the experiments work or the theory holds together.
.

I would say that people certainly cannot decide for themselves. A normal average person simply cannot decide if global warming is really happening by simply doing an experiment. People like to think that science is about being completely logical and being open to new ideas. In fact, it is as much about getting grants and having a job, which, to some extent at least, means towing the party line.

Evolution is generally regarded as a ridiculous idea by those with very little knowledge of it. I suppose having a preconception that it isn't going to be worth your while learning about it isn't a good way to start doing so though.

For myself, having spent the last three years learning about evolutionary theory (among other things, but virtually every biological subject involves evolution in some way), having gone into this entirely open minded, I can see absolutely no other way that things possibly could have happened. There's just too much evidence for it - people call the theory of gravity and the theory of relativity theories, but every single bit of evidence so far supports them (I think, not sure about the relativity one actually). It's frustrating to know this as a fact and then to have other people try to tell you, knowing none of the evidence, that it's silly.

It's like having a blind person try to prove to you that colour doesn't exist - except worse, because someone with congenital blindness has no chance of appreciating colour ever, whereas someone who just hasn't bothered learning the evidence is just plain lazy, in my opinion.

Science is about reporting what's there. No one says 'this is exactly what's going to happen to the global climate' because no one knows for sure. However, again based on all the evidence, the vast majority of scientists believe that anthropogenic emissions are driving global warming. As do I.

You might not be able to build yourself complicated and expensive equipment to take the measurements, but the suggestion that someone with this equipment would then make up numbers is ridiculous. All the relevant graphs are on the web for you to look at should you be willing to take the time.

Science is about reporting what's there. No one says 'this is exactly what's going to happen to the global climate' because no one knows for sure. However, again based on all the evidence, the vast majority of scientists believe that anthropogenic emissions are driving global warming. As do I.

You might not be able to build yourself complicated and expensive equipment to take the measurements, but the suggestion that someone with this equipment would then make up numbers is ridiculous. All the relevant graphs are on the web for you to look at should you be willing to take the time.

I wouldn't suggest that anyone would make up the numbers. However, they might very easily decide to deduce a particular outcome from the numbers that best fits their case. They might also decide to issue a press release that sexes up their findings to the general public while writing up an accurate account in a journal. The general public might then read this sexed up version and take it as the truth.

My point would be that I have to have faith in theories because I cannot investigate them all. I cannot go to university and spend 3 years studying evolution, because I can't afford it. Even if I could then there would be two snags, one is that I couldn't also study every other theory at the same time to a sufficient level and the second is that I would be taught by the very people who are avid believers.

Because I cannot possibly understand all the theories, I have to have faith in the scientists. If I express any lack of faith then Jealots such as Crayfish will get just as annoyed as the local priest would have done 100 years ago if I had said I didn't think that the virgin birth made any sense.

I would say that people certainly cannot decide for themselves. A normal average person simply cannot decide if global warming is really happening by simply doing an experiment. People like to think that science is about being completely logical and being open to new ideas. In fact, it is as much about getting grants and having a job, which, to some extent at least, means towing the party line.
Again I disagree - I think that ordinary people could decide for themselves. If you don't trust the experts, and it matters that much to you, then there's nothing to stop you becoming an expert yourself, though it will take time and effort. Work through a few meteorology text books, read the papers that are conveniently collected in the IPCC reports, etc, all available for free from your local library [I hope]. Then, unless you believe that there is some massive conspiracy and that all the reported observations are just made up (as Crayfish put it), you would indeed be able to decide for yourself whether the majority opinion is just a convenient fiction.

KenH is right inasmuch as science is about getting a job and getting your research funded. There's a lot of McScience out there nowadays.

But Crayfish & CaptainSwing are right in that it is relatively easy to educate yourself about science, statistics and other relevant topics, and having done so you are in a pretty good position to assess for yourself how thorough any particular piece of scientific research is, what assumptions it may be based upon, what shortcuts it may have taken, and whether there is an agenda behind it.

It isn't necessary to take a degree course to find out this stuff. Admittedly, I studied Psychology for three years which included a fair bit of scientific methodology and statistics, but I have learned far more from reading relevant and well-written popular science books. The Dawkins one I mentioned is a good start to get a grounding in evolutionary theory, and John Allen Paulos's Innumeracy (and various other books by him) will give you a good grounding in how numbers can be manipulated, so that you can be aware of when somebody is trying to pull the wool over your eyes (they are also really easy and enjoyable to read, even for people who hate maths, which lets face it is most people).

I wouldn't suggest that anyone would make up the numbers. However, they might very easily decide to deduce a particular outcome from the numbers that best fits their case. They might also decide to issue a press release that sexes up their findings to the general public while writing up an accurate account in a journal. The general public might then read this sexed up version and take it as the truth.

My point would be that I have to have faith in theories because I cannot investigate them all. I cannot go to university and spend 3 years studying evolution, because I can't afford it. Even if I could then there would be two snags, one is that I couldn't also study every other theory at the same time to a sufficient level and the second is that I would be taught by the very people who are avid believers.

Because I cannot possibly understand all the theories, I have to have faith in the scientists. If I express any lack of faith then Jealots such as Crayfish will get just as annoyed as the local priest would have done 100 years ago if I had said I didn't think that the virgin birth made any sense.


You don't need 3 years at university to understand evolution.
If you're interested then you can gain enough of an understanding in a few weeks with a decent set of reference books to be able to make a reasoned judgement.
As for alternate theories, (I guess you mean ID and creatonism), there isn't that much to study, they don't present any evidence or logical reasoning for you to try to understand, they just tell you how it is and expect you to accept it.

And if you're unsure about gravity, here's the alternative (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512)

And if you're unsure about gravity, here's the alternative (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512)

I haven't said that I dis-believed any mainstream theories in order to believe the alternative, crackpot, theories. I haven't actually said that I don't agree with the idea that the climate is changing. What I said was that there are many theories that have become accepted to a degree where you have to take them on faith. I don't accept that everyone can learn enough science to decide for themsleves based on the original data. I might very well be able to decide for myself about some theories but the majority of people in the world simply can't. I happen to think that there are big problems with the theory of evolution, and that the "blind watchmaker" is cobblers. This doesn't mean that I think we had dinosaurs here 4000 years ago. It just means that I believe that there is something special about humans that sets us aside from other animals and cannot reasonably be explained. I am quite prepared to believe that there might be another theory in the future which does explain things without recourse to blaming God for everything.

It's true that what the experts decide as the best theory to fit the evidence does tend to become the accepted theory - but there are plenty enough experts for the important fields so that theories are worked out through thorough debate rather than through arbitrary judgements - and I don't see any better way of doing it. For fields where the evidence is insufficient to confirm one theory or another, it's generally made clear that there is a divide.

I don't rely on press releases, which tend to be very hit-and-miss. It's pretty easy to find the accurate journal versions http://scholar.google.com/ and there's no reason to stop people doing this. I believe most people (barring those with true mental handicaps) can learn enough about a chosen topic to decide for themselves.

The fact you're here on the web, talking in a fairly lucid fashion means that you can use google scholar or similar to find journals and that you speak the language well enough to understand the articles.

Again, for someone to try and have an opinion WITHOUT learning the evidence is just bizarre, and really lazy considering how easy it would be to do so. Before I step into a debate about anything I make sure I learn the facts, even if it's a topic I have little prior knowledge of. I'm not saying everyone should spend a massive amount of time learning about everything in the world, but just that you shouldn't form such strong opinions as 'this theory is cobblers' when you haven't looked into it properly.

Also - I've spent three years learning a lot more than evolution, as a topic on its own I reckon a fast and intelligent reader with an open mind could absorb enough of it to get by within a few days. I have a large book sitting on my desk here called Evolution that's about 2-3 inches thick but - while preferable - the basic concepts don't require that much depth.

but just that you shouldn't form such strong opinions as 'this theory is cobblers' when you haven't looked into it properly.
.

I am not clear where in my posts I said I hadn't looked into it properly. In fact you have no reason to suppose that I haven't studied this area for far longer than you have. The only reason you suppose I haven't studied it in detail is that I suggest that elements of it are wrong. By suggesting that some elements are wrong, I lead myself open to attacks from jealots. Since you believe everything you are told and have expended so much effort in reinforcing your belief, then you have to attack all those that question the true faith. By saying that the Blind Watchmaker is cobblers I must not have understood it because otherwise I would have said that it is "the word".

So have you looked into it for far longer than I have? It was more the complete lack of any evidence to support your beliefs that led me to this conclusion.

Um, jealot: 'a hostile fanatic acting on jealousy'

Jealousy? Explain.

And if you're unsure about gravity, here's the alternative (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512)

I can't really see much wrong with this theory. When school children are taught about gravity, they aren't told what causes it. They are simply told that two objects will attacts one another and are given a few formulas. What does it matter if the force described by the formula is some mysterious force that the teacher says must exist or if it is Jesus pushing the two things together? When they calculate the force they will get the same answer. The real question is "does Jesus use SI units?".

So have you looked into it for far longer than I have? It was more the complete lack of any evidence to support your beliefs that led me to this conclusion.

Um, jealot: 'a hostile fanatic acting on jealousy'

Jealousy? Explain.

I think you can deduce that I didn't study hard spelling for three years as I meant "zealot". I have no idea where the J came from, unless it was that Jesus was in my mind at that time (or maybe I just can't spell).

I have no idea whether I have looked into evolution for more or less time than you have. I cannot really know how much you have investigated things or whether you had an open mind or not. The problem is that you can't know this about other people and yet you can assume things based on them disagreeing with you.

But my assumptions were correct, were they not?

I assumed this because everyone I know who has looked into evolution significantly without a prior agenda has come to the conclusion that it's correct, and that if you really did know what you were talking about you'd present evidence to support your views. I've offered you ample opportunity to do this and that opportunity still remains. So far I've only heard 'I don't think this is correct' not 'I don't think this is correct because: x y and z'. This leads me to believe that you have formed very strong and well defined views based on a relative sparsity of actual knowledge.

Likewise I can't really know whether you've investigated with an open mind or not (if you have investigated at all, that is) - if you held religious beliefs before beginning to look into these things, I suspect not.

But my assumptions were correct, were they not?

I assumed this because everyone I know who has looked into evolution significantly without a prior agenda has come to the conclusion that it's correct, and that if you really did know what you were talking about you'd present evidence to support your views. I've offered you ample opportunity to do this and that opportunity still remains. So far I've only heard 'I don't think this is correct' not 'I don't think this is correct because: x y and z'. This leads me to believe that you have formed very strong and well defined views based on a relative sparsity of actual knowledge.

Likewise I can't really know whether you've investigated with an open mind or not (if you have investigated at all, that is) - if you held religious beliefs before beginning to look into these things, I suspect not.


Alot depends upon the definition of 'evolution'. I think its difficult for anyone to argue that change is taking place, and has always done so. What I dont believe is the theory behind 'why' that particular change is taking place. I certainly dont accept that the universe with all its complexities and complex laws, and life on Earth just occurred by itself without any 'creator'.

I think one of the underlying problems driving this whole debate is the distaste of the Catholic church and inparticular the battle between the scientists and the church re its Dogma's.

Sadly this dispute has inadvertantly (or perhaps not) made the Catholic church the representative of 'religion', which is very unfortunate. I dont want to offend any catholics, but the Church has its Dogma's which other religions dont. Unfortunately, many of these Dogma's have been proven to be incorrect, the famous one being when Galileo proved that the Earth spins around the Earth and not vice versa.

The Catholic Church and its dogma's are not representative of 'religion'.
I've read verses in the Quraan which allude to all life being created in the oceans etc, there certainly aren't any 'dogmas' which have been contradicted by science, to the contrary, there have been scientific discoveries which support assertions in the Quraan such as embryo's in human birth. It also highlights creatures such as Bee's and Ants, which to this day science is only beginning to unravel.

Science is not the enemy of religion, to the contrary, science is simply understanding and knowledge. Its just unfortunate that religion and science have protrayed as mutually exclusive because of Western European history visa vi the Catholic Church.

Z

and that if you really did know what you were talking about you'd present evidence to support your views. .

The reasons that I haven't presented any evidence are :-

1. This post was about religion. I was making a comparison between old religions and the new religion which is the unquestioning belief that science will explain everything.

2. I can't produce evidence that someone hasn't produced a convincing argument. I can only say that in some isolated areas of science, there is no real proof, other that that which is extrapolated from real evidence. You can't disprove something that doesn't exist. The hoes I refer to in evolution are those areas where scientists have attempted to draw far fetched conclusions from extrapolated evidence.

I am an un believer and a bit of a heretic. Throughout history we have had people who didn't agree with the established church and were attacked because of it. Are you behaving any differently from them?

yes, reasoning with you is completely the opposite approach that would have been taken/is taken with someone who disagrees with something religous.

I'm not meaning to attack you personally Ken, but I do get extremely annoyed when people feel free to broadcast opinions with such belief in their validity when they haven't put the effort in to be able to back those opinions up.

Imagine how you'd feel if you'd spent the last three years learning how to build cars and then someone tried to argue that cars in fact assemble themselves from meteorites and called you a liar with complete conviction, saying that your entire mechanics training was a waste (even though if they went and looked at a car or read a mechanics book they'd see they were wrong) - now imagine if quite a lot of people did this, and tried to force their belief into conventional education (probably while waving their arms in the air and going 'all hail the holy meteorite, hallelujah'). That's why this is a touchy subject for me.

The thing is, science is the explanation for everything by definition because it's a mutable, adaptive entity - if God showed up and said yep, here I am, here's some miracles, by being observable he would then be part of science. It's the logical explanation for everything that we know so far (ideally anyway - doesn't always happen instantly but it gets there in the end).

As I've said previously in this thread there's no way to disprove God or any other deity in essence, nor would I wish to - but theisms e.g. those in the Bible can be disproved quite easily (sorry if this isn't true for the Quraan Zafar, I don't really know anything about that - I thought it did have a similar creationism / anti-evolution component to Christianity but if this is a false belief then I apologise).

There's a difference between evolutionary theory itself and the explanations for the gaps that you mention. The explanations put forwards to fill those gaps are hypotheses and wouldn't be purposely publicised as anything but. It may be that in the future more evidence will come to light that shows which of these hypotheses is correct, or different hypotheses may be proposed. However gaps don't disprove the mechanisms of evolution themselves, for which there is overwhelming evidence.

As an example, no one's quite sure what species was ancestral to the Homo genus. It may have been an Australopithecus species, but those from the right time zone don't seem to be morphologically similar enough, while the better morphological candidates haven't yet been found in the right temporal context. Hypotheses include: a) a large morphological leap e.g. from A.africanus or A.garhi, b) that A.afarensis was around in the right period but we just haven't found the fossils yet, or c) that another species that we haven't yet discovered in the fossil record gave rise to Homo (I'd go for this one, personally). But the fact there is insufficient evidence to state which one of these is correct doesn't mean that evolution doesn't occur at all!

I'm not meaning to attack you personally Ken, but I do get extremely annoyed when people feel free to broadcast opinions with such belief in their validity when they haven't put the effort in to be able to back those opinions up.

Imagine how you'd feel if you'd spent the last three years learning how to build cars and then someone tried to argue that cars in fact assemble themselves from meteorites and called you a liar with complete conviction, saying that your entire mechanics training was a waste (even though if they went and looked at a car or read a mechanics book they'd see they were wrong) - now imagine if quite a lot of people did, and tried to force this belief into conventional education. That's why this is a touchy subject for me.

The thing is, science is the explanation for everything by definition because it's a mutable, adaptive entity - if God showed up and said yep, here I am, here's some miracles, by being observable he would then be part of science. It's the logical explanation for everything that we know so far (ideally anyway - doesn't always happen instantly but it gets there in the end).

As I've said previously in this thread there's no way to disprove God or any other deity in essence, nor would I wish to - but theisms e.g. those in the Bible can be disproved quite easily (apologies if this isn't true for the Quraan Zafar, I don't really know anything about that).

Its also worth noting that many a time a scientific theory is just that - a theory. Often when theories are tested it turns out that the theory and the general scientific consensus was actually way off mark.

I remember a couple of years ago when they were measured the expansion rate of the universe. The consensus had been that the universe would/should be slowing down, infact it turned out that the expansion of the universe was accelerating.

Please dont take the above as meaning I'm anti-science, I'm just trying to point out that we still dont know a hell of a lot, and often people assume theories to be scientific proofs.

Z

This is true, but there is more evidence for some theories than others - where theories are based on little access to evidence e.g. for technological reasons as in your example, they should naturally be regarded as a little flimsier than those that have a great deal of evidence behind them

I'm not meaning to attack you personally Ken, but I do get extremely annoyed when people feel free to broadcast opinions with such belief in their validity when they haven't put the effort in to be able to back those opinions up.

Imagine how you'd feel if you'd spent the last three years learning how to build cars and then someone tried to argue that cars in fact assemble themselves from meteorites and called you a liar with complete conviction, saying that your entire mechanics training was a waste (even though if they went and looked at a car or read a mechanics book they'd see they were wrong) - now imagine if quite a lot of people did this, and tried to force their belief into conventional education (probably while waving their arms in the air and going 'all hail the holy meteorite, hallelujah'). That's why this is a touchy subject for me.

The thing is, science is the explanation for everything by definition because it's a mutable, adaptive entity - if God showed up and said yep, here I am, here's some miracles, by being observable he would then be part of science. It's the logical explanation for everything that we know so far (ideally anyway - doesn't always happen instantly but it gets there in the end).

As I've said previously in this thread there's no way to disprove God or any other deity in essence, nor would I wish to - but theisms e.g. those in the Bible can be disproved quite easily (sorry if this isn't true for the Quraan Zafar, I don't really know anything about that - I thought it did have a similar creationism / anti-evolution component to Christianity but if this is a false belief then I apologise).

There's a difference between evolutionary theory itself and the explanations for the gaps that you mention. The explanations put forwards to fill those gaps are hypotheses and wouldn't be purposely publicised as anything but. It may be that in the future more evidence will come to light that shows which of these hypotheses is correct, or different hypotheses may be proposed. However gaps don't disprove the mechanisms of evolution themselves, for which there is overwhelming evidence.

As an example, no one's quite sure what species was ancestral to the Homo genus. It may have been an Australopithecus species, but those from the right time zone don't seem to be morphologically similar enough, while the better morphological candidates haven't yet been found in the right temporal context. Hypotheses include: a) a large morphological leap e.g. from A.africanus or A.garhi, b) that A.afarensis was around in the right period but we just haven't found the fossils yet, or c) that another species that we haven't yet discovered in the fossil record gave rise to Homo (I'd go for this one, personally). But the fact there is insufficient evidence to state which one of these is correct doesn't mean that evolution doesn't occur at all!

I think you are assuming things about me which you cannot know from my post. I have no problem with the theory of evolution in most cases. I have a big problem with it when it comes to explaining some of the amazing things which make us human. I suggest that current evidence cannot explain these things properly so we shouldn't just try to fill in the gaps. Or rather we should try to fill in the gaps but should treat these gaps as theories rather than facts. It is interesting to me that so many "theories" are defended as if they are facts.

I don't subscribe to alternative crackpot theories nor do I find holes in many other aspects of science. This thread is about religion and I say that the way that the majority of people have to take the word of a few on scientific issues is similar to religion. I say that the the Blind Watchmaker is cobblers written by a self important zealot, who wanted to write a best seller. Those people who have studied his work will then say that this is heresy (but they will use other words) and that they know best. If I don't like it then I can study at their college where they will explain it to me until I do understand it and so accept it. Should I still not accept it, because of the obvious gaps, then I will fail the exams and be forced to leave. Should I pass the exams then I can't get a job anywhere if I turn up for an interview and tell the staff that I disagree with some of the foundation of their careers and funding.

The same applies to climate change. I can see that things are changing, in fact I remember telling people this at length 20 years ago when it was obvious to me from my work. What we now have is a climate change industry who have a vested interest in telling the populace that the sea will flood their homes in 20 years. There is some good science that can produce meaningful data but then it is sometimes interpreted by people who have a vested interest in worse case scenarios. It may well be the case that many people can understand the figures if they are presented to them, but they cannot properly understand the conclusions from this data and take much of it on faith.

Its also worth noting that many a time a scientific theory is just that - a theory. Often when theories are tested it turns out that the theory and the general scientific consensus was actually way off mark.
This is the crux of science - all scientific theories are just that, theories. They are the best explanations currently put forward to meet the data. They can at any time be disproved by data which does not fit, or can be replaced by subsequent theories which provide a better fit.

This contrasts with religious dogma, where a religious text is sacred and may not be tampered with, even if subsequent knowledge comes to light which makes it quite clear that, for example, the earth wasn't made in seven days.

Please dont take the above as meaning I'm anti-science, I'm just trying to point out that we still dont know a hell of a lot, and often people assume theories to be scientific proofs.
There is no such thing as a "scientific proof", this is a common misnomer. Science can only offer disproofs and theories. See above.

Re: Richard Dawkins, I agree that of late he has "evolved" into a zealot whose rabid nature does little to promote his own arguments, but he is still a very bright guy and his early works in particular provide very clear explanations of evolutionary theory which destroy some common misconceptions.

Imagine how you'd feel if you'd spent the last three years learning how to build cars and then someone tried to argue that cars in fact assemble themselves from meteorites and called you a liar with complete conviction, saying that your entire mechanics training was a waste (even though if they went and looked at a car or read a mechanics book they'd see they were wrong) - now imagine if quite a lot of people did this, and tried to force their belief into conventional education (probably while waving their arms in the air and going 'all hail the holy meteorite, hallelujah'). That's why this is a touchy subject for me.
I like the example of the car. Put very simply the car has to be designed, produced to exact specifications, assembled and everything has to interact with each other. It needs a planner, someone with an overall view and excellent knowledge of their subject. The same goes for a television. Both are completely different, they are based on a different set of design principles. One cannot evolve into the other. They are a different species. The design of the car evolves, the design of TV evolves, but they are separate and individualistic. The colour TV evolved from one set of design principles (DNA/chromosomes) the racing car evolved from a different set of design rules.

I think you are assuming things about me which you cannot know from my post. I have no problem with the theory of evolution in most cases. I have a big problem with it when it comes to explaining some of the amazing things which make us human. I suggest that current evidence cannot explain these things properly so we shouldn't just try to fill in the gaps. Or rather we should try to fill in the gaps but should treat these gaps as theories rather than facts. It is interesting to me that so many "theories" are defended as if they are facts.

I don't subscribe to alternative crackpot theories nor do I find holes in many other aspects of science. This thread is about religion and I say that the way that the majority of people have to take the word of a few on scientific issues is similar to religion. I say that the the Blind Watchmaker is cobblers written by a self important zealot, who wanted to write a best seller. Those people who have studied his work will then say that this is heresy (but they will use other words) and that they know best. If I don't like it then I can study at their college where they will explain it to me until I do understand it and so accept it. Should I still not accept it, because of the obvious gaps, then I will fail the exams and be forced to leave. Should I pass the exams then I can't get a job anywhere if I turn up for an interview and tell the staff that I disagree with some of the foundation of their careers and funding.

The same applies to climate change. I can see that things are changing, in fact I remember telling people this at length 20 years ago when it was obvious to me from my work. What we now have is a climate change industry who have a vested interest in telling the populace that the sea will flood their homes in 20 years. There is some good science that can produce meaningful data but then it is sometimes interpreted by people who have a vested interest in worse case scenarios. It may well be the case that many people can understand the figures if they are presented to them, but they cannot properly understand the conclusions from this data and take much of it on faith.

Ok, you're right, I had the wrong end of the stick as to where you were coming from (though your posts suggested this to me, for whatever reason) - but thanks for explaining more clearly what you meant. Must admit I haven't read the blind watchmaker and do tend to treat most 'popular scientists' with suspicion, though I have heard good things about Dawkins and it's on the list of things to look into.

Don't think that you'd fail exams for pointing out that there are holes, presenting a rational argument based on the evidence showing your own thoughts would be the best way to a good mark, whether the lecturer happens to hold that particular viewpoint or not. It's arguing without evidence or with fictional suppositions that irritates people, not holding a contrary but well thought out viewpoint.

Sometimes results can be misinterpreted or skewed towards a certain agenda, but do you think that every person in the UK then believes that one person who tells them that their homes will be flooded in 20 years? None with sense, and even press releases tend to present a more diverse view than that. However I do trust (by and large) A) the original data, B) decent peer-reviewed journal articles and C) reports produced by committees of people who if biased at least have different/opposing biases e.g. the IPCC. All of these suggest to me that global warming is a reality and my view is that we'll start to see noticeable effects over the next 3 decades or so - notice that this is my view and I don't advertise it as anything but that.

I have a big problem with it when it comes to explaining some of the amazing things which make us human. I suggest that current evidence cannot explain these things properly so we shouldn't just try to fill in the gaps. Or rather we should try to fill in the gaps but should treat these gaps as theories rather than facts. It is interesting to me that so many "theories" are defended as if they are facts.


Out of interest, what is it that you think is amazing about humans? And what explanations of these things specifically do you find wanting?

Maybe the feeling that things are presented as facts rather than theories is down to where they are being presented. The media always dumb down, and in doing so often loose vital nuances, such as the difference between a suposition and a firm theory.

We can write software which will evolve grahame. Without a planner or a designer, working through a series of random mutations it eventually reaches a point where it is ideally adapted to the conditions it is in.

A car will never do this because it doesn't simulate life, it has no mechanism for reproduction, and thus no way for small incremental changes to accumulate.

Maybe the feeling that things are presented as facts rather than theories is down to where they are being presented. The media always dumb down, and in doing so often loose vital nuances, such as the difference between a suposition and a firm theory..

Whilst I agree that the media tend to dumb down, the scientists also tend to make things more exciting that they really are in order to justify their work. The most obvious example would be the recent idea about using idle CPU time on everyone's computer to number crunch a climate change model. The PR release from the organisation stressed a temperature rise of 11 degrees when the vast majority of computers had predicted 3 degrees. The BBC investiged this, because they had encouraged people to take part. Here is a quote:-


But is the media solely to blame? We asked several climate scientists to read the paper and the press release publicising it. All were critical of the prominence given to the prediction that the world could heat up by 11C.

"I agree the 11C figure was unreasonably hyped. It's a difficult line for all scientists to tread, as we need something 'exciting' to have any chance of publishing... to justify our funding," one scientist wrote

That's more a proof that even scientists are human and that not everyone can resist the lure of trying to make themselves look important.

And in this case, anyone interested and putting research into it would then understand that the vast majority of papers say 3-6 degrees over the next 100 years.

People are not forced to take these things on faith, the freedom of information on the web and in libraries means that it's perfectly possible and often fairly easy to find out what differing views there are and which one if any is held as most reliable.

Or is your argument that people who rely on press releases and do no research of their own often have a poor understanding of subjects such as global warming? Because I'd wholeheartedly agree with this.

And in this case, anyone interested and putting research into it would then understand that the vast majority of papers say 3-6 degrees over the next 100 years.

People are not forced to take these things on faith, the freedom of information on the web and in libraries means that it's perfectly possible and often fairly easy to find out what differing views there are and which one if any is held as most reliable.

Or is your argument that people who rely on press releases and do no research of their own often have a poor understanding of subjects such as global warming? Because I'd wholeheartedly agree with this.

No, my argument is that scientists who work in certain fields such as this one, have a vested interest in all talking up the problem. If they demonstate that there isn't a problem then they will find funding harder to come by. In fact I think that this mostly not the case but was in response to the suggestion that the press are responsible. The press will print things that sound exciting and 3 degrees doesn't. Many people can decide for themselves, but many can't, they just take what they read in faith. First they hear about a huge experiment to decide how much the earth will heat up and this information comes from the BBC. Next they hear that the results show an 11 degree rise, maybe from a newspaper or poorer quality TV station. They might reasonably assume that real scientists have carried out a huge project and proved that the rise will be 11 degrees. Why should they check that? Can we reasonanly expect people to check every such fact? You might argue that they could go to the local library but that assumes that everyone can check every fact. Instead I suggest that they are acting reasonably by having faith in reputable orgisations and that such faith is no different from the faith in religion.

We can write software which will evolve grahame. Without a planner or a designer, working through a series of random mutations it eventually reaches a point where it is ideally adapted to the conditions it is in.
"a series of random mutations" then. Are you serious? You mean like the monkeys who were set to work hammering away on typewriters? You know they produced nothing and the experiment was eventually aborted. Sometimes scientists talk as much nonsense as those monkeys produced gibberish.


Crayfish was putting himself into the position of a car mechanic as an illustration. He pointed out that if someone told him all his studies were useless and that cars were assembled from meteorites, then he would be upset, and rightly so because that person was talking nonsense.

But isn’t this what the scientists say happened with their ‘big bang’ theory?

there are major religions that recognise no godhead phan, shintoism, buddism, confuscism etc...

kathy - someone who does not believe in the existance of any form of deity would be an aetheist.

A religion without a god? What is a religion then?

Crayfish was putting himself into the position of a car mechanic as an illustration. He pointed out that if someone told him all his studies were useless and that cars were assembled from meteorites, then he would be upset, and rightly so because that person was talking nonsense.

But isn’t this what the scientists say happened with their ‘big bang’ theory?
You're confusing the universe with an artefact within the universe. That is known as a category error I believe.

As for the monkeys: given infinite time, or an infinite number of monkeys, they will produce the complete works of Shakespeare. And that is a certainty (given infinite monkeys or time).

And in this case, anyone interested and putting research into it would then understand that the vast majority of papers say 3-6 degrees over the next 100 years.
Which is certainly wrong.

Crayfish was putting himself into the position of a car mechanic as an illustration. He pointed out that if someone told him all his studies were useless and that cars were assembled from meteorites, then he would be upset, and rightly so because that person was talking nonsense.

But isn’t this what the scientists say happened with their ‘big bang’ theory?


Let me change that to:- scientists say happened with their "chance mutation" theory.

In reality they are trying to deny the existence of a supreme power.

Yes, going more deeply into it the IPCC didn't incorporate many positive feedback systems and so on...

Maybe the take home message is actually that everyone should judge for themselves based on the evidence, and that taking anything on faith is likely to lead to false opinions and beliefs?

The most obvious example would be the recent idea about using idle CPU time on everyone's computer to number crunch a climate change model.

I'm just thinking about the increase in power consumption and carbon output that would create. What a daft idea. Leave your computer switched on and running at full pelt to calculate climate change models?

It's a bit like running people over for a survey on road safety.

is it just me, or does this debate surface about once every three weeks, involving the same people...????

science is far from perfect, and i always like the 'analog-digital' idea to exlain it:

take an analog sound-wave, and then digitize it. the resulting wave is only as accurate as the sophistication of the thing digitizing it. so we use to have rather poor versions of the sound.

then cd's came in, and suddenly we were able to get a pretty good rendition. that was over 20 yrs ago and the technology is improving still.

but if we analyse the sound, zoom into it, we find the digital copy will never be as 'smooth' as the original.

This is a little bit like using scientific principles to understand/explain life. the tools available do a fantastic job of explaining why things happen in particular ways. but the tools can only highlight a certain, tangible/physical probability about our universe and cause/effect.

this is why science struggles with the more meta-physical questions, questions about the nature of our existence, the sense of being, the meaning behind it all.

religion pops up and spoonfeeds people just the right amount of babble to placate them, anesthetising them in the cocoon of warm, delusional righteousness...that is why these guys will never be swayed away from thier belief system, because it would remove all meaning from them. they would have to come to terms with a life without god, and that would be fatal; religion to them is like a life-support machine, and there is no way they will switch it off.

i prefer to be a little more real about the nature of the world i inhabit. i do believe that there is an underlying creative force, which is at once part of everything in the universe. i dont believe it nobbled a virgin bird in the middle-east and created a bloke called jesus though.

i may be tempted to believe in the possibility of extra-terrestrial beings after a few pints, but of a bearded, benevolent geezer? less chance than slimsid in a brothel...

I suggest that they are acting reasonably by having faith in reputable orgisations and that such faith is no different from the faith in religion.
I agree that they are acting reasonably, but don't think they're acting on faith. It's more a question of trusting the reputable organisations. Faith is belief for no reason, whereas trusting the reputable people assumes that there are reasons, just ones that we don't know but the experts do.

I still think that when it comes to evolution and climate change, the debate would be accessible to anybody who put in the effort to become well informed about those things, but if you don't think so then I'm not going to argue that point any more.

Maybe the take home message is actually that everyone should judge for themselves based on the evidence, and that taking anything on faith is likely to lead to false opinions and beliefs?
No. Scientists have found out about gravity (haven't we progressed a long way?) They know about the existence of black holes and now they need to discover the driving force behind the universe. What I call for want of a better word "God".

In other words I'm looking to the scientists to prove the existence of God because the models don't work without him/it.

I agree, there has to be some sort of driving force behind the Universe. Needs a name, call it God, till we find something better.

Fraid that's where I step off though, because then it turns into a bearded man (or therianthropic deities, or whatever) for no apparent reason and attaches itself to loads of ancient cultish mythology (whichever theistic system, they all have some mythology to the best of my knowledge, which doesn't cover them all) that doesn't apply in the modern world.

My personal belief? If there is a creative force of any sort (and things have to come from somewhere at the end of the day), then this Universe was created at the time of the big bang and the complex natural laws we see now set out in full. These laws then went on to govern the formation of planets, galaxies etc. and eventually, in our case, life, which evolved in an essentially random manner according to the rules of said natural laws.

I don't see why the existence of God means people have to pretend observable laws don't apply. Or that he has to look like people. Or that he wrote a book 2000 years ago that was full of obvious falsehoods but which everyone must now live their lives around. If the deity is intelligent and watching then it must have had a great laugh at religion. I don't percieve it as an aware entity myself incidentally, more a sort of... web of energy? Not sure. I don't really have a defined mental image as there's no basis on which to define it - but these things can't be proved or disproved now and may never be.

I don’t know if I believe in a bearded man, who told you that?

Natural laws is good, it is like saying natural order and we can see it all around us.

Your comments about religion and mans application of its laws I tend to agree with. There has been a bit of a cock up over the years I think, perhaps due to mans ‘invention’ of new religions and the paraphernalia to go with it.

Obviously there is a need for laws of some description.

Neither do I believe in an interventionist God, I think basically we are responsible for our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being and a good moral and ethical code is useful/esential.

I also think much Bible teaching is misunderstood and I think a proper understanding of it would be a good basis on which to build. But these are just my personal thoughts you understand and I do believe also that if everyone keeps an open mind then there is common ground, after all scientists are human also with emotional needs, families, responsibility, health issues, etc. and having inquiring minds they must wonder about the future?

I wasn't aiming that at you specifically Grahame, I was just noting down my personal views.

There must be laws of some description, but we didn't invent them and only by looking at the observable effects of those laws can we hope to understand them.

Apologies, but I can't subscribe to the idea that teaching the bible (or koran, or hindu texts etc.) will do much good to anyone. A better start would be to forget all religious myth and dogma and let everyone come to their own conclusions about what form the unknown may take, or rather let them come to the realisation that we can't possibly know what form that is yet.

The bible is an inconsistent text that is outdated by nearly two millennia - interesting as a historical curiosity, but definitely not the source of all wisdom in the modern age. In its literal meaning it contravenes many of the natural laws we now know and the twisted metaphors people attempt to make of it require some quite incredible leaps of imagination, and then still fall short of modern knowledge. The whole thing is written as and reads like a book of fiction, and that's all that it can be rationally percieved as. In fact, believing in the bible seems to require either an active denial of reality or basal level of ignorance.

Incidentally, compared to Hinduism all other major religions can be viewed as a bit of a cock up of man inventing new religions. And that's after man invented that one, as well as doubtless an unimaginable amount of others over the last 160,000 years or more that we have probably been mentally capable of doing so. Inventing religions is a part of the human psyche, just like telling stories of myth and magic.

My take on it is that it'd be better to learn as much as we can about this Universe of ours that we're lucky enough to be a conscious inhabitant of, and hope that a better understanding of what goes on in it might give us clues as to what came before it. But putting so much effort - whole lives - into one particular interpretation of what that was, without having even the most basic understanding of the gift we have before us, is simply tragic.

There speaks an atheist and as such I don't know how you can comment on Christianity. You are so wrong.

Why am I? Because you say so?

Apologies in advance if I have interrupted the flow of the thread by posting this reply directly to the first post by the OP. It really got me intrigued.

This is what I understand for myself. I think religion do play a big part in any humans' lives. I myself have had times in my life when I looked towards something bigger, and meaningful to explain it all. Though, I do understand that there is a group dynamic, and mentality that just forms itself naturally if one is a believer of a religion.

Also, sometimes it does play a big group in segregation of people. It really does. What most people do, is to try and fit and get on well together with the common parts that they have. Because religion is such a sensitive and personal subject, it can be quite rude to be inquisitive or intruding on another's own private personal thoughts/beliefs.

Acceptance and tolerance of other's religion is not easy. As it does make one question their own religious beliefs.

Why am I? Because you say so?
Noun
atheist (plural atheists)
1 A person who does not have a belief that one or more deities or gods exist. (weak atheism)
2 A person who believes that no god exists (strong atheism)
3 A person who feels convinced that all references to gods are rooted in fiction and/or ancient superstition.

That about sums up your position, does it not?

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Atheist

There speaks an atheist and as such I don't know how you can comment on Christianity. You are so wrong.

I consider myself an atheist. I would like to know why I am so wrong?

I consider myself an atheist. I would like to know why I am so wrong?

That is easy. You must be wrong because you are not a Christian and all Christians know the truth. I am also wrong, by the way.

Apologies in advance if I have interrupted the flow of the thread by posting this reply directly to the first post by the OP. It really got me intrigued.

This is what I understand for myself. I think religion do play a big part in any humans' lives. I myself have had times in my life when I looked towards something bigger, and meaningful to explain it all. Though, I do understand that there is a group dynamic, and mentality that just forms itself naturally if one is a believer of a religion.

Also, sometimes it does play a big group in segregation of people. It really does. What most people do, is to try and fit and get on well together with the common parts that they have. Because religion is such a sensitive and personal subject, it can be quite rude to be inquisitive or intruding on another's own private personal thoughts/beliefs.

Acceptance and tolerance of other's religion is not easy. As it does make one question their own religious beliefs.
I agree with you Bago and I think it is so nice when people are prepared to talk about their feelings as you have done, it is almost as if people are afraid to admit they have a heart in the spiritual sense and I think it is wonderful you have had the courage to speak out. Personally I am happy to accept that people have their own beliefs and I respect them for it. My work used to take me into peoples homes and I was very happy to take my shoes of for example because of their faith, but it does distress me when people poke fun at Christianity which is my faith and I am glad that you spoke of acceptance and tolerance for other peoples beliefs but I am afraid some people are very intolerant and very arrogant in their belief that they are right and everyone else is wrong on the grounds it can’t be scientifically proven and you may have seen this for yourself if you have read the posts.

Of course it's wrong if not only is there no evidence for it, but the evidence that there is contradicts it directly. As you haven't answered the question I assume that there is no evidence to support your beliefs.

It's been a pleasure debating with you Grahame and I truly apologise for any personal distress that logical thought brings. Try thinking about the world rationally for a moment though - it's quite nice really, not too scary at all.

Take care.

Chris

I consider myself an atheist. I would like to know why I am so wrong?
You are wrong in your critique of Scripture.

By the way, I am curious, if you are an atheist, why do you concern yourself with these matters? Not only that but you seem intent on forcing your opinion on other people? It is as if you are an evangelistic heathen and you want to convert everyone to atheism, or have I misunderstood and you are really searching?

Just read your last post and my post may now be inappropriate and for that I apologise.

Thanks.

You are wrong in your critique of Scripture.

By the way, I am curious, if you are an atheist, why do you concern yourself with these matters? Not only that but you seem intent on forcing your opinion on other people? It is as if you are an evangelistic heathen and you want to convert everyone to atheism, or have I misunderstood and you are really searching?

Because I don't agree with so much of the world being in the grip of pure irrationality. Religion gets hold of people very early and then seems to prevent them from learning the wonders of the natural world, or indeed anything approaching an understanding of existence. It seems like a sort of mental disease that would be tolerable did it not get in the way of reality so much.

Sorry, but religion does produce some exceedingly stupid people. Look to Evangelical America for an example.

Anything that brainwashes children and destroys their ability to think with an open mind is worth fighting against in my view.

Again, the only assurance I have that I am wrong is your word, and weighing that up against the blindingly obvious, I think I'll take the obvious.

No worries, I thought we'd stopped but your question was interesting so thought I'd answer it.

Oo, 1000 posts! How exciting!

Incidentally, cheers - an evalangelical heathen is one of the best things I've ever been called. Think that's on a par with being called a peasant by harmonica man once.

Because I don't agree with so much of the world being in the grip of pure irrationality. Religion gets hold of people very early and then seems to prevent them from learning the wonders of the natural world, or indeed anything approaching an understanding of existence. It seems like a sort of mental disease that would be tolerable did it not get in the way of reality so much.

So much for me - brought up a good roman catholic boy and sent to roman catholic schools - I'll never learn anything about science or how the world works. I had better turn in my BSc, MSc and PhD and stop doing research!

Sorry DrNeil, not suggesting that it can't be thought out of or integrated into a more realistic view of the world. I think it is more of a problem where religion is more widespread and an everyday part of society though, and I imagine that it could well be a disincentive to enter the sciences in the first place as they're viewed as the enemy.

I don't think many of the people on my degree course are religious at all - none of the people I know well are, though there is allegedly a creationist somewhere who sits there shaking his head all the way through any lecture involving evolution.

Were on my degree course, I'll be able to say in a couple of days.

Just proving a point that the problem isn't with religion per se - the actual problems are two-fold:

1. People who think their point of view is right and everyone else must be wrong and not only wrong but must be shown the error of their ways (this applies equally to those devout rationalists who decry all religion as equally wrong).

and

2. Those who run organised religions as a way of amassing temporal power (which is probably most of them more or less - at their core most seem to be political entities rather than spiritual ones) and use their followers as an "army" as a means of increasing their own temporal power.

You could argue that it inhibits some peoples understanding of science - but then again given the general level of scientific literacy this is pretty debatable anyway!

I argue that it inhibits the motivation to become more scientifically literate, both directly - through being religious and not wanting to learn things that clash with your beliefs - and indirectly through actively denying scientific findings and popularly undermining them.

The level of scientific literacy is frankly abominable. Seems like you have a shocking divide between scientists on one hand and then people who know bugger all on the other. Why is this a bad thing? Because a knowledge of scientific principles and a grounding in scientific thinking would help with political decision making and with other aspects such as caring for the environment properly. For instance the exotic pet trade persists because the customers don't know how much damage it is doing to conservation, likewise because politicians aren't fully aware of this problem the penalties for importing endangered species are pitifully lenient.

And then you have people like Bush, who make many decisions based on religious conviction and not rational thought. And people who vote for people like Bush.

I argue that it inhibits the motivation to become more scientifically literate, both directly - through being religious and not wanting to learn things that clash with your beliefs - and indirectly through actively denying scientific findings and popularly undermining them.

I think you may be wrong there. There is no real dichotomy between a scientific learning and religion. There have been many cases of religious men making great scientific discoveries (e.g. Gregor Mendel) and certainly church run schools will teach standard scientific orthodoxy rather than creationism et al. You seem to have a rather simplistic Manichaen view of Scientific / Religious that you can only follow one or the other and they are inherantly antithetical which just isn't the case.

What about the efforts in America to bring creationistic teachings into schools? When asked directly, Tony Blair said he 'wasn't sure' whether he'd like creationism to be taught in UK schools.

I believe that reason and theism are antithetical to a great extent.

I'm going to bed. :)

Night

You are wrong in your critique of Scripture.

By the way, I am curious, if you are an atheist, why do you concern yourself with these matters? Not only that but you seem intent on forcing your opinion on other people? It is as if you are an evangelistic heathen and you want to convert everyone to atheism, or have I misunderstood and you are really searching?

Just read your last post and my post may now be inappropriate and for that I apologise.

Thanks.

Personally I see it a little bit like being in a room with some adults who still believe in father christmas and the tooth fairy. It'd be rude not to poke a little fun at them, and a little bit mean not to at least try to explain where the presents come from at christmas time.

the good doctor (i've wanted to say that for ages) makes a reasonable point.
Being religous doesn't stop someone being a scientist, and sometimes great scientists are also very religous.
But I think if it were studied (and this is just supposition) you would find that a child brought up with a strong religous background is less likely to enter the scientific arena. There will always be exceptions, but it's the trend that's important.
Religion tends to stifle free thought, precisely because it presents 'answers' and does not allow for those answers to be questioned.

It seems like a sort of mental disease that would be tolerable did it not get in the way of reality so much.


Religion has been likened to a memetic virus, the selfish meme... It's an analogy that I think has good legs.

Personally I see it a little bit like being in a room with some adults who still believe in father christmas and the tooth fairy. It'd be rude not to poke a little fun at them, and a little bit mean not to at least try to explain where the presents come from at christmas time.

Isn't that engaging in a little intelectualy arrogance and norrow mindedness though? The best you can actually say is 'I don't believe in the existance of god as I have no empirical evidence for his existance'. But at the smae time you equally have no empirical evidence for the non-existance of god - whichever side of the fence you fall on is a matter of faith. Why not just leave people to their beliefs and be happy with your own?

I believe that reason and theism are antithetical to a great extent.

something for you to ponder when you're waked up cray.....

as a reasonable scientist; i believe in darwin's theory of evolution and the theory of an expanding universe. i would call myself an atheist...and yet there comes a point where....

it is as easy for me to reasonably believe that there is a god, as it is to believe that there was some speck of infinite density, who's 'big bang' created our universe. what existed before that particle cray? :)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . /

Religion tends to stifle free thought, precisely because it presents 'answers' and does not allow for those answers to be questioned.
Not wanting to directly challenge anyone's own religious beliefs, but for the sake of debate and arguments. This comment rings true in my mind.

Well, why does religion stifle free thoughts when in the past, so called philophers/scientists/theologians like Leonardo Da Vinci were commissioned by the Pope to paint, to think ?

My point is that, religion did not stifle free thoughts. Well, not in Da Vinci's case anyhow. A lot of so called scientists were religious too.

Not wanting to directly challenge anyone's own religious beliefs, but for the sake of debate and arguments. This comment rings true in my mind.

Well, why does religion stifle free thoughts when in the past, so called philophers/scientists/theologians like Leonardo Da Vinci were commissioned by the Pope to paint, to think ?

My point is that, religion did not stifle free thoughts. Well, not in Da Vinci's case anyhow. A lot of so called scientists were religious too.

I think Copernicus might disagree!

Wilf

Personally I see it a little bit like being in a room with some adults who still believe in father Christmas and the tooth fairy. It'd be rude not to poke a little fun at them, and a little bit mean not to at least try to explain where the presents come from at Christmas time.
Father Christmas, as understood by most people, is a fairy tale the same as the tooth fairy. Jesus was a real person. It would help if you got your facts right. You may be wrong about Saint Nicholas as well.

Here is an example. If someone drowned trying to rescue another person, would you make fun of the deceased? Whatever you may think of someone for jumping into a fast flowing river he performed a heroic act and so did Jesus.

To make fun of people is rude and bad mannered and if you haven't got the decency to respect other peoples opinions you should be baned from the forum for making derogatory remarks and for making a figure of fun of people.

I wouldn't suggest that anyone would make up the numbers. However, they might very easily decide to deduce a particular outcome from the numbers that best fits their case. They might also decide to issue a press release that sexes up their findings to the general public while writing up an accurate account in a journal. The general public might then read this sexed up version and take it as the truth.

My point would be that I have to have faith in theories because I cannot investigate them all. I cannot go to university and spend 3 years studying evolution, because I can't afford it. Even if I could then there would be two snags, one is that I couldn't also study every other theory at the same time to a sufficient level and the second is that I would be taught by the very people who are avid believers.

Because I cannot possibly understand all the theories, I have to have faith in the scientists. If I express any lack of faith then Jealots such as Crayfish will get just as annoyed as the local priest would have done 100 years ago if I had said I didn't think that the virgin birth made any sense.

KenH, this is the SMARTEST POST on this entire thread.

Let's take it a step further.

Not only do we have to suspend our disbelief when it comes to scientific theories, think about our doctors- the priests of the twentieth century.

How do you know when you need a particular operation?
How do you know that you have a certain disease?

The lab results come back- how do you know that the lab is honest or that the disease even exists? How do you know that a medication is good for you?

You have absolutely no idea. You can't study it, after all. If you challenge it, what happens? Its like sixeenth century Europe all over again. Believe me, in America, where people pay for health care, the abuse by the system is horrific. Doctors are always recommending people for unnecessary surgeries or giving them drugs that they don't need, just to make some cash or make it look like they are doing something. I personally have had friends go through this and end up screwed up for life. Total vultures!! Yet try saying something bad about a doctor- you'll never get good health care again.

Well I have read the whole thread and learned some new things about science and religion.

What it really comes down to is respect. I can see that there are very clever people who I respect who believe in God and a religion. In that sense I find it hard to sign up to this 'poor deluded fools' line of thinking, it is arrogant.

Are science and religion really that incompatible though? The problems you are describing KenH and Jamsicle are not problems with science per se (ie, the scientific method) but more with scientific institutions such as the medical community. Just as I dont think many people are 'anti-faith; they maybe are just sick of the superiority and hypocrisy of relgiious institutions such as the catholic church or the imams.

Isn't that engaging in a little intelectualy arrogance and norrow mindedness though? The best you can actually say is 'I don't believe in the existance of god as I have no empirical evidence for his existance'. But at the smae time you equally have no empirical evidence for the non-existance of god - whichever side of the fence you fall on is a matter of faith. Why not just leave people to their beliefs and be happy with your own?

exactly the same situation we find ourselves in regarding father christmas and goblins.

exactly the same situation we find ourselves in regarding father christmas and goblins.

And exactly the same argument applies - if someone is happy with believing in father christmas, the tooth fairy, goblins etc. etc. why does it bother you so much? They are their beliefs not yours why not let them be happy with them?

Are science and religion really that incompatible though? The problems you are describing KenH and Jamsicle are not problems with science per se (ie, the scientific method) but more with scientific institutions such as the medical community.

And this is exactly the same problem that there is with religion - not with the religion or beliefs per se but in the organisations who have their own experts (priests) and terminology (theology) specifically designed to separate them from the masses!

something for you to ponder when you're waked up cray.....

as a reasonable scientist; i believe in darwin's theory of evolution and the theory of an expanding universe. i would call myself an atheist...and yet there comes a point where....

it is as easy for me to reasonably believe that there is a god, as it is to believe that there was some speck of infinite density, who's 'big bang' created our universe. what existed before that particle cray? :)

No one knows - and at that point I'm as happy to call whatever it was God as anything else. I've said a few times in this thread that Deism makes sense, rationally, believing in a creative force - there must have been something before after all, some reason for what's here now. Incidentally don't take my word for it - I've come to these conclusions, or at least refined the conclusions I'd already made myself partly by reading Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, where he works through a lengthy and verbose but extremely thorough disproof of theicism. Well worth reading.

Theism - believing in the mythology of a religion e.g. god's up in heaven watching us all sin with all his angels, jesus turned water into wine etc., is an altogether different proposition. Bang on line with father christmas, goblins and anything else that has sprung from the human imagination. Therefore I would say that I'm an atheist, but not an adeist e.g. I believe there's a creative force of some sort, I just don't think that it has anything to do with the nonsense major religions bang out.

And exactly the same argument applies - if someone is happy with believing in father christmas, the tooth fairy, goblins etc. etc. why does it bother you so much? They are their beliefs not yours why not let them be happy with them?

Because if you saw someone who was mentally ill, and honestly believed that there were upside down jelly beans with pink flappy navels waiting round every corner to eat them, you'd be tempted to try and talk them out of it. Seeing that they weren't in a rational state with this belief, you'd lock them up. What you wouldn't do is allow them to raise children and educate them with this belief in jelly bean - fearing communities, stand for president / prime minister or be in any position of responsibility at all.

It's aggravating to see that people who by logical standards are stark raving mad are allowed to do this, and that the large voting base of similar loonies tends to mean that they have reasonable success.

And exactly the same argument applies - if someone is happy with believing in father christmas, the tooth fairy, goblins etc. etc. why does it bother you so much? They are their beliefs not yours why not let them be happy with them?

I wouldn't actually say that it bothers me very much at all. I don't go around looking for religous people to cure, and I don't start threads talking about religion or god. I just like to post in them if someone else has started it, and see if I can help anyone overcome their delusions.
Call it altruism if you like, I don't like to see fellow people in a delusional state without at least giving a brief go at helping them out.

Because if you saw someone who was mentally ill, and honestly believed that there were upside down jelly beans with pink flappy navels waiting round every corner to eat them, you'd be tempted to try and talk them out of it. Seeing that they weren't in a rational state with this belief, you'd lock them up. What you wouldn't do is allow them to raise children and educate them with this belief in jelly bean - fearing communities, stand for president / prime minister or be in any position of responsibility at all.

It's aggravating to see that people who by logical standards are stark raving mad are allowed to do this, and that the large voting base of similar loonies tends to mean that they have reasonable success.

Isn't that another category error? You can't make comparative analogies (or not useful ones) between God and Father Christmas, or Goblins.

Father Christmas, Goblins and "upside down jelly beans with pink flappy navels" are composite ideas; Father Christmas is old, male, dressed in red, bearded, goblins are small, green, usually male, with pointy features.

The concept of God is both unique and indivisible. It's not the same as something you (or someone else) have "made up" out of other parts.

Even Dawkins, in a soft, unguarded moment, acknowledged this, when chastising a Christian for having a (and I loosely paraphrase) "humdrum and banal idea of God ... when Science finally discovers God, as it must, it must be a more awesome and splendiferous thing than we can even conceive of now."

This idea of a mental disease is interesting. We - rational: They - undesireable.

The question I'd ask Dawkins is, if the idea of God is so wrong why is the meme for it so successful, residing as it does in four fifths of the minds on the planet? Maybe he's the defective one.

Delusional state? Why - because it doesn't agree with your beliefs? I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who would see this is at the very least the height of intelectual arogance if not the delusional belief in an entirely rational universe with no room for unknowns!

Personally I find prosthetizing fanatical athiests just as disturbing as prosthetizing fanatical anything else...

I would call any firm belief with zero evidence delusional. There will always be unknowns, where there is no evidence any suggestion carries equal weight. Where there's evidence, that shouldn't be ignored, denied or simply not ever learnt due to theistic beliefs. That's a case of assuming that the hypothesis suggested when there was a lack of evidence is more important than the well evidenced reality - if a scientist makes up a story to fit an unknown, they'll drop it once sufficient evidence comes in to disprove it. To keep on with it is irrational and delusional.

Phanerothyme - if you read back it's not the idea or existence of God I'm debating here, it's the rationality of theicism. God as a unique and indivisible force is fair enough, it's God as an anthropomorphical entity draped in mythology - as you say, a composite idea - that I'm commenting on. A belief in a creative deity does not imply a belief in the word of the Bible, the word of the hobbit or any other book that is without empirical basis in reality.

I would call any firm belief with zero evidence delusional.

Like dark matter for example?

There will always be unknowns, where there is no evidence any suggestion carries equal weight. Where there's evidence, that shouldn't be ignored, denied or simply not ever learnt due to theistic beliefs.

Can you give any examples of this happenening today?

Like dark matter for example?

Dark matter is acknowledged as a theory - as is string theory and so on. There is however one line of evidence for dark matter - the observation that the mass we can account for materially is only a small proportion of that out there. But there is insufficient evidence to do any more than speculate on this. One day, we may find evidence that clearly shows one line of speculation to be correct and others incorrect - at this point the incorrect speculators will quite happily (or at least with no more than minor grumbling) concede to the evidence.

Can you give any examples of this happenening today?

Yes. Grahame's (and I'm sure many others) views on evolution i.e. that it simply doesn't happen, one species can't change into another and that all species that have ever lived were all created at once then some died out. That's the relatively harmless tip of a theistic iceberg, the fact is that (as far as I'm aware, any evidence to the contrary would be welcomed) there is absolutely no reason to believe that any theistic system is anything more than a human invention.

Crayfish answered the questions directed at me, so won't bother to essentially repeat what he said.

Dark matter is acknowledged as a theory - as is string theory and so on. There is however one line of evidence for dark matter - the observation that the mass we can account for materially is only a small proportion of that out there.

Thats not a line of evidence - thats an observation that can be accounted for by the theory of dark matter. However dark matter has become deeply entrenched in the world of theoretical physics and is often talked about as fact rather than as theory. And lets be honest here the idea that 75(ish) percent of the universe is made of of matter that has no interactions with other matter and neither reflects or emits electomagnetic radiation could be seen as grasping at cosmological straws by many!

Yes. Grahame's (and I'm sure many others) views on evolution i.e. that it simply doesn't happen, one species can't change into another and that all species that have ever lived were all created at once then some died out. That's the relatively harmless tip of a theistic iceberg, the fact is that (as far as I'm aware, any evidence to the contrary would be welcomed) there is absolutely no reason to believe that any theistic system is anything more than a human invention.

And their rejection of the THEORY of evolution impinges on research and learning how?

Phanerothyme - if you read back it's not the idea or existence of God I'm debating here, it's the rationality of theicism. God as a unique and indivisible force is fair enough, it's God as an anthropomorphical entity draped in mythology - as you say, a composite idea - that I'm commenting on. A belief in a creative deity does not imply a belief in the word of the Bible, the word of the hobbit or any other book that is without empirical basis in reality.

It's this pursuit of the rational that I also find somehow fundamentalist.

This implies that the axioms you use to construct your rationality are absolutely unquestionable. If they are not, then you must concur that your rationality is subjective, and just as 'valid' as the next one.

Are there any jesuits on the board?

Here's one of the perils of religion,

Drowned at Woodhouse Dec 1883
The Mormonites or Latter Day Saints--
On Monday last, the eleventh inst., an inquest was taken before Mr. T Badger, coroner, and a highly respectable jury,
at the Gate Inn, at Handsworth Woodhouse, near Rotherham, on view of the body of Robert Turner, of Sheffield, age thirty five,
by trade a spring-knife cutler, whose body had been discovered on Sunday afternoon last in the river Rother.
It appeared from the evidence of William Bellamy, Mathew Gregory, Simeon Gee, and others, that Turner had embraced the
religion of the Mormonites, or Latter Day Saints, and after preaching at Handsworth Woodhouse on Sunday, the nineteenth
of November, he gave out that if any person felt thoroughly convinced of the truth of the religious principles which he
professed and preached, and would attend early on the following morning, he would baptise them in the river Rother.
Accordingly, very early on the following morning, several persons met Turner, their preacher, in a meadow called "Fairy Meadow",
adjoining the river above Woodhouse Mill, and the party, after praying and singing, and being addressed by one of the preachers
from Sheffield, as to the absolute necessity of their being born of water and of Spirit, or else they could not enter the Kingdom of Heaven, several of the disciples at once proceeded to strip off all their clothes, and Turner plunged into the river, which was deep, and considerably swollen by the late rains, followed by one William Bellamy, a collier, whom he baptised in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
He got out safe, and then one Mathew Gregory went in, and the priest, after plunging him over head, to use the man's own words,
"slockening" him, he, with great difficulty, half drowned, much starved, and frightened, scrambled out of the river and saved his life, but Turner, on leaving hold of Gregory, unfortunately slipped forward into the deep water, and the current running strong, he was
carried away into the middle of the river, and soon sank to rise no more.
Exertions were made to save the man without effect.
Daily efforts have since been made to find the body, and on Sunday afternoon last it was discovered standing upright in the river,
with the head partly out of the water, and about twenty five yards only from the place he was drowned.
The coroner and jury, after making strict inquiry into all the circumstances of the case, but strongly condemning the rash and inconsiderate conduct of the parties in plunging into the river, where it was both deep and dangerous, and strongly recommending
the survivors not again to run such risks, returned a verdict of "Accidental death".


Perhaps he was called away by his God, The coroner seems to make more sense in his summing up.

I can see what I would call "my" God, (if I were to be religious which i'm certainly not) every day when the Sun comes up, can you show me yours?

I can see what I would call "my" God, (if I were to be religious which i'm certainly not) every day when the Sun comes up, can you show me yours?

What you are seeing is a "mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace" which may easily be confused with God by the layman.

God, however makes and breaks suns open for breakfast.

--
edit
and perhaps God is what makes up the missing mass of the universe? In which case he may move in mysterious ways, but we will always know when he's been for a crap.

Have u ever considered that 'science' can also be viewed on the same level as a religion because they share the same attributes ?

- Undefinable theories, miracles.
- Conceptual ideas which have taken thousand of years to evolve, and believed, and interpreted.
- Group mentality and psychology at play. All believers tend to 'get' each other and understand and accept it their chosen science or religion.

KenH/Jamiscle: I pondered on this when I was a kid, learning A-level physics. How come we can never find anything new, and discover anything new ? Was my knowledge limited ? If I was to discover something new, do I have to prove something from the basic foundation up ? The answer is 'No'. Science evolves and moves, by accepting the basic foundation building blocks. A molecule is a molecule. An atom is an atom. If we don't believe these basic things, then we don't have anything to base science on. i.e. one does not believe in science. But if u know the basics, u will see science work everyday. Your walking dynamics, how your body digests, how you sweat. How a car moves...etc.

Yes, when given medicines and wotnots. We may feel that it won't work, but if we take time out, and think about our health and monitor our diets, and history. Then we sure do believe that eating healthily works. It may take some time, but it works. Or taking a simple paracetamol will stop the pain. The same can be said for medicine. Obviously the well tested medicines will of course be used more often. Be glad that in the UK, we have a strict control over drug testing and approval. We are not like the US. US maybe more 'forefront', but at the expense of its patients. In the UK, this is not the same, which is better for its citizens. I know that a lot of drugs that are available over the counter in the US are not the same in the UK. Be glad that we're not a 'druggie' nation.

Thats not a line of evidence - thats an observation that can be accounted for by the theory of dark matter. However dark matter has become deeply entrenched in the world of theoretical physics and is often talked about as fact rather than as theory. And lets be honest here the idea that 75(ish) percent of the universe is made of of matter that has no interactions with other matter and neither reflects or emits electomagnetic radiation could be seen as grasping at cosmological straws by many!



And their rejection of the THEORY of evolution impinges on research and learning how?

Does calling it theory in loud letters somehow make creationism more likely? There's no good reason to abandon reason and teach children that the world was created just 4000 years ago when all the evidence suggests otherwise, which is what quite a few christian religous fundamentalists would like to do.

Have u ever considered that 'science' can also be viewed on the same level as a religion because they share the same attributes ?

- Undefinable theories, miracles.
- Conceptual ideas which have taken thousand of years to evolve, and believed, and interpreted.
- Group mentality and psychology at play. All believers tend to 'get' each other and understand and accept it their chosen science or religion.


undefinable??? Surely the opposite, if it's not defined then it's not a theory.

Miracles??? Really, I must have missed that one.

Does calling it theory in loud letters somehow make creationism more likely? There's no good reason to abandon reason and teach children that the world was created just 4000 years ago when all the evidence suggests otherwise, which is what quite a few christian religous fundamentalists would like to do.

No - it reinforces the fact that it is a theory rather than concrete fact. It may be the most probable theory but it is still theory.

I haven't heard of any christian fundamentalists wanting to discard evolution in favour of creationism - though I have heard of many wanting both to be taught.

undefinable??? Surely the opposite, if it's not defined then it's not a theory.

Miracles??? Really, I must have missed that one.
I'm thinking whether I'm using the right terminologies and words here.

My understanding is that, I did not believe that Jesus was a real person. Even the Turin Shroud shows inconsistency, and as far as I know, it may be linked with a historical person, but that did not mean it is the same person as said in the bible. There are inconsistencies in linking the two. As far as my limited knowledge goes. Hence I said 'theory' (with regards to Christianity anyway, never mind other religion like Catholicisms, and Islam. The fact the bible and Koran relates to one another just mind boggles me.)

With regards to science. It's acceptable to take atoms and molecules as accepted theories, cos they are loosely defined in their own ways. With the new research into quantum physics and discovering what is inside one of these being the 'forefront' of technologies. It can and do turn over everything that we accept and believed to be true.

Are they as defined as we think they are ? To me, so far, your average joe blogg just accepts a certain level of certainty and definitions. If something new is discovered, it can be discarded or accepted. If accepted, it means turning everything that already existed based on the current acceptance level.

undefinable??? Surely the opposite, if it's not defined then it's not a theory.

Miracles??? Really, I must have missed that one.
Roger Penrose is good on mathematical miracles and beauty. I can recommend him highly.

Have u ever considered that 'science' can also be viewed on the same level as a religion because they share the same attributes ?
Absolutely - rationalist vs theist metanarratives competing for memetic real estate!

God, however makes and breaks suns open for breakfast




Show me the proof.

Show me the proof.
LOL.......that's quite witty considering the title of this thread.

Retep - *bow*bow* :D

Does calling it theory in loud letters somehow make creationism more likely? There's no good reason to abandon reason and teach children that the world was created just 4000 years ago when all the evidence suggests otherwise, which is what quite a few christian religous fundamentalists would like to do.
4000 years ago? Get your facts right Cyclone and stop spreading myths.

undefinable??? Surely the opposite, if it's not defined then it's not a theory.

Miracles??? Really, I must have missed that one.
The miracle is that according to you a crocodile turned into a bird and flew away. Because that is what evolution is about.

The miracle is that according to you a crocodile turned into a bird and flew away. Because that is what evolution is about.

Oh how sweet, belittling a theory now? Evolution is damn good science, evidence, fulfilled predictions and a systematic approach.

Better than faith, which by its very nature relieis on an individual to accept something with no repeatable systematic evidence.

I'd rather have something with tangible evidence than be told that something exists or happeend but it can never be proven.

Wilf

Show me the proof.

What, that God brought about the creation?

I would have thought that is obvious - If 'he' had not done so, then neither of us would be here discussing it. Surely that is obvious?

Besides, I think we're discussing the relative merits of the reductionist, causal, rational worldview, and the irrational, numinous and holistic worldview. And whatever falls in between. Not whether god actually exists or not. That's a given, whichever side your coming at it from.

Typical Wednesday afternoon really.

I'd rather have something with tangible evidence than be told that something exists or happeend but it can never be proven.

Wilf
From someone who can't spell what tangible evidence do you have? Show me the missing links.

From someone who can't spell what tangible evidence do you mean? Show me the missing links.

I'm sorry you have to resort to bringing spelling into it. I expected a better show from the creationists.

Wilf

What, that God brought about the creation?

I would have thought that is obvious - If 'he' had not done so, then neither of us would be here discussing it. Surely that is obvious?

Thank you.:)

I'm sorry you have to resort to bringing spelling into it. I expected a better show from the creationists.

Wilf
Come on man show me what you have. Prove it to me. You made a statement.

Come on man show me what you have. Prove it to me.

How about this, I'll show you my proof if you show me your proof?

Oh wait, you can't.

Wilf

How about this, I'll show you my proof if you show me your proof?

Oh wait, you can't.

Wilf
I know that if you give me a blood transfusion with monkey blood I will die. Yet according to evolutionists you are descended from a monkey.

Come on man show me what you have. Prove it to me.How about this, I'll show you my proof if you show me your proof?

Oh wait, you can't.

Wilf
No let's not go down that route huh.

Leave spelling flames out of it too. It's easy to get het up because these are core issues that govern how we give our lives moral, ethical, even aesthetic perspectives, instead letting them be "nasty, brutish and short".

But if I can flip flop between:

accepting the existence of an omniscient creator deity

and

accepting reductive reasoning as the only true path to enlightenment.

Why can't you?

:)

No let's not go down that route huh.

Leave spelling flames out of it too. It's easy to get het up because these are core issues that govern how we give our lives moral, ethical, even aesthetic perspectives, instead letting them be "nasty, brutish and short".

But if I can flip flop between:

accepting the existence of an omniscient creator deity

and

accepting reductive reasoning as the only true path to enlightenment.

Why can't you?

:)
I can accept an omniscient creator deity but I can't do the second because crayfish said about the way the evidence pointed and it points to an ordered world rather than things happening by chance.

I know that if you give me a blood transfusion with monkey blood I will die. Yet according to evolutionists you are descended from a monkey.

I was begging to be worried there but you just made one of the biggestfaux pas in the evolution creation debate, glad to see you can give me all the ammunition I need to make you looks stupid.

Your surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor.

The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, "If children descended from adults, why are there still adults?" New species evolve by splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms become isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct.

Wilf

I know that if you give me a blood transfusion with monkey blood I will die. Yet according to evolutionists you are descended from a monkey.

Please, please stop putting stupid words in the mouths of evolutionary scientists.

Monkeys, apes and humans descended from a common ancestor, which was neither a monkey, an ape nor a human. The exact estimates for the point at which the last common ancestor for each point of relation (e.g. we share less common descent with spider monkies than with chimpanzees) vary slightly, but for instance the last common ancestor of chimps and humans is thought to have been 7-8 million years ago.

Likewise, crocodiles and birds share common ancestry but this is probably (find a better figure if you can be bothered to research it, this is an educated guess) on the order of 200-240 million years ago.

You want the missing link? Not sure quite what missing link you're referring to, but if it's this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gawis_cranium there you go.

I was begging to be worried there but you just made one of the biggestfaux pas in the evolution creation debate, glad to see you can give me all the ammunition I need to make you looks stupid.

Your surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor.

The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, "If children descended from adults, why are there still adults?" New species evolve by splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms become isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct.

Wilf
This is a perfect example of brainwashing. Show the evidence.

Please, please stop putting stupid words in the mouths of evolutionary scientists.

That is what you and cyclone do with Christians.

The miracle is that according to you a crocodile turned into a bird and flew away. Because that is what evolution is about.

you obviously don't understand what a miracle is.

An event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God:

evolution can be explained, and fits the current evidence we have. Not a miracle, just the laws of nature at work as far as we (I) understand.

That is what you and cyclone do with Christians.

No, Christians are quite capable of achieving that without any assistance

What misevidence have I presented on Christianity's behalf?

Edit: Okay, misevidence may not be a real word, but you get the gist.

This is a perfect example of brainwashing. Show the evidence.

You're the one with no proof, I fail to see how me having an answer and you having none constitutes me being brainwashed.

Wilf

You want the missing link? Not sure quite what missing link you're referring to, but if it's this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gawis_cranium there you go.
The Gawis cranium is the developement of a single species and the only way you can make evolution work is by manipulation.

The Gawis cranium is the developement of a single species.

You said show me the missing link, I showed you a fossil anatomically halfway between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. This is a missing link.

The Gawis cranium is the developement of a single species.

You mean you want evidence of every single step? whether in fossil records or bones?

Now you're just making frustrating request ad infinitum and making unreasonable demands on an alway incomplete historical and fossil records.

Wilf

You said show me the missing link, I showed you a fossil anatomically halfway between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. This is a missing link.No it is not. And there should be millions of fossils showing the gradual development. OK so there are two or three showing the development of homo sapien. (man)

Fossil records are only snapshots of the process of evolution anyway, the process itself is well established.

Yes, it is. A link is a connection between two objects or events, that fossil is a connection between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens.

Please feel free to coherently explain any objections you may have, but simply saying 'no it is not' and giving no supporting evidence will not convince anyone.

I doubt if you're convincing yourself any more.

No it is not.

My what a insightful and explanatory response.

I might as well become a creationist with arguments like that.

Wilf

From someone who can't spell what tangible evidence do you have? Show me the missing links.

Call me stupid, but if they could be shown, then they wouldn't be missing would they.

Does the lack of a small part of the chain of evidence for homo sapiens invalidate the entire theory, or does it just mean that we haven't found that small bit yet?

There are examples of evolution at work, it's much easier to see on a small scale, bacteria for example reproduce so quickly that we have already seen the evolution of drug resistant strains.
On a slightly more macro scale, you can track evolution within insect populations. There was a type of butterfly which was forced by environmental pressure to adapt by growing larger dark colourings in the early 19th century (the pressure being changes caused by human industrialisation).
A fairly small change, but you can see (if you choose too) how accumlating many such changes over millions of years for one branch of the butterfly would leave it as a seperate species from the original and different to a cousing population evolving to cope with different pressures in a different environment.

We had this discussion before and you said that you aren't interested in learning about evolution or trying to understand the theory, you just want to denounce it, so i'm wasting my time really.

Moth - but yes. Evolution has been shown in the laboratory and in field studies such as the early Biston betularia melanicus experiment that Cyclone alludes to many a time and picking holes in the fossil record only demonstrates that fossilisation is a relatively rare process, which we already knew.

You mean you want evidence of every single step? whether in fossil records or bones?

Now you're just making frustrating request ad infinitum and making unreasonable demands on an alway incomplete historical and fossil records.

Wilf
People like crayfish ask for evidence. So do I. Is there a problem?

Call me stupid,
You got that right. What is that about a small part. You said billions of years, right.

People like crayfish ask for evidence. So do I. Is there a problem?

Yes, the evidence convinces beyond any reasonable doubt, you don't know what evidence there is and you believe in a theistic system for which there is no evidence. Is that enough problems with your statement?

You got that right. What is that about a small part. You said billions of years, right.

You were asking for missing links demonstrating events that happened in the space of less than a hundred thousand years (fortunately the Gawis cranium shows that this particular period of time did leave hominin fossils). We have evidence for recent human evolution leaving no gaps larger than this in the last 2.5 million years.

The first evidence of unicellular life on Earth is around 3.5 billion years ago. First evidence of multicellular life about 640 million years ago (unequivocal evidence from 570 or so).

Show the evidence.
Could try this (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1405103450/qid=1149090117/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_3_1/026-2323876-7114064) for starters, regarding evolution in general - or try watching this (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000AISIQ/qid=1149090273/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2_2/026-2323876-7114064).

If it's evidence for human evolution you're particularly interested in, I think that this (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1405103787/qid=1149090349/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_3_1/026-2323876-7114064) would probably be a good place to start.

Hope that helps :thumbsup:

People like crayfish ask for evidence. So do I. Is there a problem?

We lookign for evidence to shpw us something, you're asking for it again and again and again without even learning anything from it? You suggest that the fact we haven't found something proves it doesn't exist.

Would you say a person doesn't exist if you couldn't see them, despite being able to see thier shadow?

Cartesian doubt is the basis for all scienetific research, not denial.

Wilf

Moth - but yes. Evolution has been shown in the laboratory and in field studies such as the early Biston betularia melanicus experiment that Cyclone alludes to many a time and picking holes in the fossil record only demonstrates that fossilisation is a relatively rare process, which we already knew.
And yet there are dinosaur fossils and if you go to the right places you can pick up any rock, crack it open and find a fossil. You are manipulating, the only trouble is you have no evidence to manipulate.

Yes, the evidence convinces beyond any reasonable doubt, you don't know what evidence there is and you believe in a theistic system for which there is no evidence. Is that enough problems with your statement?
Then you are easily satisfied.

And yet there are dinosaur fossils and if you go to the right places you can pick up any rock, crack it open and find a fossil. You are manipulating, the only trouble is you have no evidence to manipulate.

fossilisation is still very rare, the reason you can go somewhere in the right places is that fosslisation occurs en masse due to fast deposition of rock.

If I go to the right place I can see a red squirrel, does that make them common?

Wild

The dinosaurs were around for 165 million years, leaving ample time to produce fossils. This doesn't mean that we have fossils from every year of their existence, or even every thousand years. When we're talking about hominin evolution we're talking about the last 7 million years, and when you're saying missing links, the space that is missing is generally less than 100,000 years. So, less chance of finding fossils, and particularly the specific species you're after.

It's certain we'll never find fossils for some of the species that have existed as many don't fossilise at all except in very rare circumstances due to a lack of calciferous parts. For those with hard parts, we'll still never find many as they'll be too deeply buried, been eroded, crushed or melted long ago or simply never happened to form fossils, living in dry environments with little sedimentation.

fossilisation is still very rare, the reason you can go somewhere in the right places is that fosslisation occurs en masse due to fast deposition of rock.

If I go to the right place I can see a red squirrel, does that make them common?

Wild
It shows red squirrels exist. You can't show fossils changing from one species to another.

Ya try, ya try.

The dinosaurs were around for 165 million years, leaving ample time to produce fossils. This doesn't mean that we have fossils from every year of their existence, or even every thousand years. When we're talking about hominin evolution we're talking about the last 7 million years, and when you're saying missing links, the space that is missing is generally less than 100,000 years. So, less chance of finding fossils, and particularly the specific species you're after.
And yet evolution speaks of changes over millions of years.

Come on. It's all eyewash and you have been brainwashed like the rest of them.

How does a lack of fossilisation equate to a lack of changes? Looking at dinosaurs for instance, you see completely different species in the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous.

I haven't ever been brainwashed by anyone Grahame, that's entirely your forte. I enjoy learning, so I do. I then base my opinions on the evidence.

You haven't ever learnt anything about this, but have assumed that it is inherently false.

It shows red squirrels exist. You can't show fossils changing from one species to another.

You can't show me god, yet you believe in him, the fact we have other evidence to suggest evolution occurs is proof enough for me and the majority of people.

You don't have ANY evidence for God, whats the big deal in asking me for proof then?

Wilf

And yet evolution speaks of changes over millions of years.

Come on. It's all eyewash and you have been brainwashed like the rest of them.

Now you're trolling for a reaction. I was hoping this thread might not descend into christian bashing and ignorant trolling, yet all you can do is post in intemperance.

Pity really, I was quite enjoying it.

Edit: Nemmind. Just commenting we've shown evidence for all objections.

Except one.

What's that?

Put it this way, if you say you are descended from Julius Caesar and there are gaps in your family tree, no one would believe you. And for a scientist I find it incredible you take the stand you do with so much certainty where there is none.

....
... the axioms you use to construct your rationality are absolutely unquestionable. If they are not, then you must concur that your rationality is subjective, and just as 'valid' as the next one.

Are your axioms really unquestionable? Why?

No, but it wouldn't show that reproduction didn't happen which is through analogy what you were trying to infer.

sorry should have done quotes -
Edit: Nemmind. Just commenting we've shown evidence for all objections.

Except one.
What's that?
....
... the axioms you use to construct your rationality are absolutely unquestionable. If they are not, then you must concur that your rationality is subjective, and just as 'valid' as the next one.

Are your axioms really unquestionable? Why?

You can't show me god, yet you believe in him, the fact we have other evidence to suggest evolution occurs is proof enough for me and the majority of people.

You don't have ANY evidence for God, whats the big deal in asking me for proof then?

Wilf
Leaving man aside who is causing chaos, you only have to look around you to see an ordered world. If you look through a microscope it becomes nothing short of miraculous.:)

What, that God brought about the creation?

I would have thought that is obvious - If 'he' had not done so, then neither of us would be here discussing it. Surely that is obvious?

Besides, I think we're discussing the relative merits of the reductionist, causal, rational worldview, and the irrational, numinous and holistic worldview. And whatever falls in between. Not whether god actually exists or not. That's a given, whichever side your coming at it from.

Typical Wednesday afternoon really.

Nice sidestep, now show me the proof.

Are your axioms really unquestionable? Why?

Ah. This one is interesting and the first challenging question I've heard this thread.

Ok, first of all... nothing at all is unquestionable. We can only rely on the information that our senses give us to draw conclusions from. It's quite possible that the world is not at all as we percieve it through our eyes and ears.

However, as there is nothing that suggests what we percieve is false, we have no reason to suppose that it isn't true. I operate on a basis therefore that what I see and hear does exist. Judgements based on this assumption tend to have positive results, I don't walk into walls or fall over very often. Therefore, whether the assumption itself is inherently correct or not does not matter, as actions resulting from this assumption still tend lead to the most favourable course of action, more often than ignoring my senses and moving according to a preconceived idea of what the world should look like would.

Now the axioms that science is based on operate in an analogous fashion to this: they can and should only ever be based on what we can observe, the broad aims of science being first to observe as much of the Universe as possible and then to explain those observations in terms of theoretical laws, which are modified or altogether changed as further evidence is found.

So then, the axioms that I base my rational existence on are first of all those things that I and we as a race can observe either directly or indirectly, and secondly are based on those observations we have managed to make so far, which is by no means the sum total of all the observations we will ever make.

It is possible that future observations will cause some aspects of science to be changed to fit those observations; but it is not possible to judge which aspects these will be (except to note that those theories that have been radically changed before tended to be based on little available evidence, so it is reasonable to expect that theories with a broad weight of evidence are less likely to be overturned). Rationality therefore is the adherence to the most parsimonious explanations for those observations so far made.

But, the fact that more observations may be made is no reason to ignore existing observations; as with my comments on human sensation, they are the best that we have to go on. It is impossible to prove anything to 100% certainty, but by making judgements with a 99.9% level of certainty the actions made as a result of these judgements are more likely to lead to favourable results than if all decision was based on the preconceived concepts of religious doctrine.

That one took a lot of thought and I'm not sure if I managed to get down in writing everything that I was trying to say, does this make sense to you phanerothyme?

Leaving man aside who is causing chaos, you only have to look around you to see an ordered world. If you look through a microscope it becomes nothing short of miraculous.:)

And yet you choose not to do this, and to deny the conclusions of those who do?

And yet you choose not to do this, and to deny the conclusions of those who do?
I have and the wonder of it is that there must be a creator.

That's not the conclusions of people who do it for a living, unfortunately.

Looking at a skyscraper for the first time someone with no knowledge of engineering might attribute it to a creator. It's complex, but can be broken down into its constituent components and understood.

The fact that you have no knowledge of engineering does not mean that engineering is not capable of building skyscrapers.

That's not the conclusions of people who do it for a living, unfortunately.

Looking at a skyscraper for the first time someone with no knowledge of engineering might attribute it to a creator. It's complex, but can be broken down into its constituent components and understood.

The fact that you have no knowledge of engineering does not mean that engineering is not capable of building skyscrapers.

Thats a very bad analogy! Engineering doesn't do anything -it's a tool to help people create. So if you look in wonder at a skyscraper and attribute it to a creator you are entirely right - someone did create it!

I was using engineering as an analogy for evolution, as a process by which the skyscraper came to be a complex structure that might, without a priori knowledge of its construction, seem to be impossible to explain by any other process except by having being placed there whole by a divine creator. I didn't mean to imply that evolution is a process carried out by men with their arse hanging out of their trousers.

I was using engineering as an analogy for evolution, as a process by which the skyscraper came to be a complex structure that might, without a priori knowledge of its construction, seem to be impossible to explain by any other process except by having being placed there whole by a divine creator. I didn't mean to imply that evolution is a process carried out by men with their arse hanging out of their trousers.
You and I know the skyscraper was created, but the scientist would have us believe it happened by chance.

the scientist would have us believe it happened by chance.

Sort of. It happens in response to the environmental pressures so in a way the direction of evolution is dictated by the environment. Mutations themselves are chance events in that any part of the genome could be affected, but the pressures of the environment determine which of the many mutations that occur are passed on and accumulate in a population.

Without environmental fluctuation and stress it is quite possible that complex life would never have come about. But then again, interactions between organisms are one example of a selection pressure - the only one that Darwin considered important, though the prevailing view is now that forces unrelated to direct inter- and intra- specific competition such as a changing climate play a big part in shaping the path of evolution. Events such as the meteor strike causing the K-T boundary extinction are another source of chance that have played a part in determining what species exist today.

I think the question of evolution should be parked. The argument (and futility of it) with grahame has been done before. Short of parading before him an organism actually somehow undergoing evolution (despite the fact that populations and not single creatures evolve) would be the only way of convincing him. And even then he'd probably accuse you of falsifying the evidence.

Back to the original point.
5.1 billion cannot be wrong. Of course they can.
At one point it was commonly believed that the world was flat. The majority of the population at that time was wrong.
It was also a common believe amongst catholics that the earth was the centre of the universe, ah err (family fortunes noise).

So 5.1 billion people could well be wrong. Although we're unlikely to ever see it acknowledged as you can't disprove the existance of something.

The title of the thread is actually '5.1 billion people can be wrong'. I think they're wrong, and don't see any reason that they should not be. Nor have the contributors for the other side on this thread done anything to convince me otherwise:

They've either misinterpreted my argument, which is against theism and not the idea that there is nothing unknown in this Universe and no deity of any sort.

Or they've taken it personally and accused me of bigotry and intolerance, which is fair enough, but character attack doesn't detract from the validity of my arguments nor does it offer any logical counterargument.

Or they've offered an opinion that I am incorrect, unsubstantiated by any logic or evidence.

The acquisition of bacterial tolerance to antibiotics that you mentioned a while ago is in effect parading evolution before him. This clearly demonstrates an alteration in the genetic constitution and traits - in fact the fundamental biochemistry of an organism, in some cases - at a population level.

The title of the thread is actually '5.1 billion people can be wrong'. I think they're wrong, and don't see any reason that they should not be.
Here are the reasons why 5.1 billion people are right.

The monk Bede (c.672 – 735) wrote in his influential treatise on computus, The Reckoning of Time, that the Earth was round, explaining the unequal length of daylight from "the roundness of the Earth, for not without reason is it called 'the orb of the world' on the pages of Holy Scripture.

Bishop Isidore of Seville (560 – 636) taught in his widely read encyclopedia, the Etymologies, that the Earth was round. His meaning was ambiguous and some writers think he referred to a disc-shaped Earth; his other writings make it clear, however, that he considered the Earth to be globular.[4]

Bishop Vergilius of Salzburg (c.700 – 784) is sometimes cited as having been persecuted for teaching "a perverse and sinful doctrine ... against God and his own soul" regarding the sphericity of the earth.

A recent study of medieval concepts of the sphericity of the Earth noted that "since the eighth century, no cosmographer worthy of note has called into question the sphericity of the Earth." [Untill Darwin came along that is.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth



Flat-Earth HeyDay Came with Darwin
The idea that the earth is flat is a modern concoction that reached its peak only after Darwinists tried to discredit the Bible, an American history professor says.
Jeffrey Burton Russell is a professor of history at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He says in his book Inventing the Flat Earth (written for the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's journey to America in 1492) that through antiquity and up to the time of Columbus, "nearly unanimous scholarly opinion pronounced the earth spherical."

Russell says there is nothing in the documents from the time of Columbus or in early accounts of his life that suggests any debate about the roundness of the earth. He believes a major source of the myth came from the creator of the Rip Van Winkle story-Washington Irving-who wrote a fictitious account of Columbus's defending a round earth against misinformed clerics and university professors.
But Russell says the flat earth mythology flourished most between 1870 and 1920, and had to do with the ideological setting created by struggles over evolution. He says the flat-earth myth was an ideal way to dismiss the ideas of a religious past in the name of modern science.


The Bible of course teaches the correct shape of the earth. Isaiah 40:22 says God sits above 'the circle of the earth' (the Hebrew word for 'circle' can also mean a 'sphere'). Also, Luke 17:34-36 depicts Christ's Second Coming as happening while some are asleep at night and others are working at day-time activities in the field-an indication of a rotating earth with day and night at the same time.

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c034.html

So the fact that some scientifically inclined monks and bishops managed to ascertain that the Earth is round is the entire basis on which you rest your beliefs? This hardly seems like direct evidence that every single major religion in the world is correct as you presumably mean by this Here are the reasons why 5.1 billion people are right.

Nor is it evidence for Christianity alone, in any way. In fact, all it shows is that some people thought the Earth was round between 560 and 784 A.D.

I'm finding this quite a bewildering tangent to fly off at, please explain why you think that this is appropriate evidence for your arguments?

Back to the original point.
5.1 billion cannot be wrong. Of course they can.
At one point it was commonly believed that the world was flat. The majority of the population at that time was wrong.
Yes Cyclone the people who believed the world was flat were those who were influenced by Darwin, the evolutionists. They were wrong. You follow the same teaching and you are also wrong.

I'm finding this quite a bewildering tangent to fly off at, please explain why you think that this is appropriate evidence for your arguments?
Sorry about your bewilderment Crayfish.

The point of your thread was that 5.1 billion people who have a religious faith cannot be right and by implication, neither can the Bible. I am demonstrating that people who believe the teaching of the word of God are right to do so.:)

But all that you showed was that some clever monks worked out that the Earth is round, which doesn't relate to the rationality of bible in any way.

But all that you showed was that some clever monks worked out that the Earth is flat, which doesn't relate to the rationality of bible in any way.
No wonder you are bemused. Would you like to check what you just said in that post and correct it please.

Oh, forget it. The Bible is right and you are wrong.

What I stated in my previous post was perfectly correct. Historical perceptions of the shape of the world have no bearing on the rationality of theism.

In conclusion: there is no evidence that the bible and other theistic systems as encompassed in this thread did not originate purely in the human imagination.

What I stated in my previous post was perfectly correct. Historical perceptions of the shape of the world have no bearing on the rationality of theism.

In conclusion: there is no evidence that the bible and other theistic systems as encompassed in this thread did not originate purely in the human imagination.

You said:-
"But all that you showed was that some clever monks worked out that the Earth is flat,"

You should have said some clever monk worked out that the earth is round, which is correct and that is what the Bible teaches.

The Bible is right, you and the flat earth society which started with Darwin are wrong. Darwin used his imagination, he got it wrong. You need to sort it out.

Ok, you're correct, I accidentally used the wrong word. To correct myself: Some clever monk worked out that the Earth is round, which naturally has nothing to do with whether the bible is rational or not.

I hold by my conclusions. The bible may teach that the earth is round (to be honest, I saw the evidence for this in another thread a while ago that you posted, and it seemed to require a ridiculous level of reading between the lines of completely unconnected statements), but this still doesn't provide evidence for the rationality of theism. It doesn't have anything to do with it, which is why I was bewildered as to why you were posting information about this. It does however demonstrate that you may not actually possess the ability to conduct logical thought, there being no logical connection between those topics - which would explain your theistic beliefs.

Again, I hold by my conclusions and furthermore conclude that you most likely have nothing further of relevance to contribute to this thread.

Theism is a product of the human imagination, thus rational thought is at least partially exempt from the abilities of 5.1 billion inhabitants of this world. In 14 pages I haven't seen a scrap of evidence to disprove this (although Phanerothyme made an interesting point a few pages ago, which I'm still going to think about).

[not really a mod note!]For the most part this has been an interesting debate - can we leave off the dogmatic "I'm right and your wrong so there" style of posting please :)

Ok, you're correct, I accidentally used the wrong word. To correct myself: Some clever monk worked out that the Earth is round, which naturally has nothing to do with whether the bible is rational or not.

I hold by my conclusions. The bible may teach that the earth is round (to be honest, I saw the evidence for this in another thread a while ago that you posted, and it seemed to require a ridiculous level of reading between the lines of completely unconnected statements), but this still doesn't provide evidence for the rationality of theism. It doesn't have anything to do with it, which is why I was bewildered as to why you were posting information about this. It does however demonstrate that you may not actually possess the ability to conduct logical thought, there being no logical connection between those topics - which would explain your theistic beliefs.

Again, I hold by my conclusions and furthermore conclude that you most likely have nothing further of relevance to contribute to this thread.

Theism is a product of the human imagination, thus rational thought is at least partially exempt from the abilities of 5.1 billion inhabitants of this world. In 14 pages I haven't seen a scrap of evidence to disprove this (although Phanerothyme made an interesting point a few pages ago, which I'm still going to think about).

I was replying to Cyclone. My mind tends to flit around and you have to be quick on the uptake to follow it. Basically if you follow Darwinism i.e. evolution, you belong to the same group who formed at the same time i.e. the flat earth society and it will fold just as surly as the flat earth society did.

As for your disgusting suggestion that Christianity is the product of the human imagination that is totally out of order and couldn't be more wrong if you had tried.

The Bible is a compendium of independent texts written over a period of about 6000 years. It gels into one complete book and each individual part supports and compliments the whole. It cannot have been contrived, it is obvious you don't understand it, I doubt if you have ever read it and you are not qualified to denigrate it and I am offended by what you say.

As for logical thinking, there you go insulting me again, but then I can see little logic in your posts where you trip yourself up and contradict yourself and make silly analogies. I am sick and tired of your silly nonsense when it comes to Holy Scripture.

the problem i have in religion is that there are many different religions that how do i know which one is telling the truth, most have different gods or no gods, but surely there can only be one god so does this mean the others have been made up? I beleive in something, just not sure what.

Why can't it have been contrived? I haven't read it, but if I did then I could quite easily then write another book to fit with it. Saying that a lot of people wrote a book bit by bit doesn't lend the statements therein validity. Also, the excerpts that I have read of the bible don't actually gel together, they're incredibly inconsistent.

If you were replying to Cyclone then why did you quote me at the beginning of your post?

Darwin never suggested the Earth was flat as far as I am aware, even if he had then it wouldn't bear any relevance to the independently and repeatedly well-evidenced phenomenon of evolution. Darwin was a very clever man and obviously revolutionary for his time, but evolutionary biology has moved on some since then. At Darwins time evolution was essentially a theory, but all the evidence since that point has supported that theory (or at least the broad concepts of it, he had a couple of things wrong).

Where have I contradicted myself?

7hills - That's a very good point, which has been discussed at several points through this thread - to summarise though if you don't fancy reading it all:

Theism is illogical - it obviously is, they can't all be right and they all spout similar sort of stories as can be found in fairy tales. Deicism isn't though, there has to be some reason behind everything, no one yet knows what that is. Perhaps it's what started off the big bang and set all the natural laws into motion: whatever it is there's no reason to give it a human representation and attach mythology to it!

the problem i have in religion is that there are many different religions that how do i know which one is telling the truth, most have different gods or no gods, but surely there can only be one god so does this mean the others have been made up? I beleive in something, just not sure what.
Yes, well there is a lot of truth in what you say and I am afraid many religions are man made, and sorry to say are false. I studied most of the major ones a long time ago, but if you study the Bible I am sure you will find all the answers to your questions in there.

And I'm sure that those who follow other religions would say the same about yours. All religions are man made, how could they be anything other? And why should your religion be more true than theirs? I've noticed you getting very distressed at my logically-supported statement that the Bible is an inconsistent text of fiction, probably written to some political agenda from archaic times, but I haven't really noticed you give any convincing defense of it. Yet you feel free to make this statement about other religions, can you not see some inconsistency here in your own beliefs?

Why can't it have been contrived?

People contemporary to the period wouldn't have allowed the scriptures to be read in the synagogues if they were a tissue of lies. That is just one reason. Don't forget Josephus who was like you in his attitude to Christ, but being a historian he recorded the day to day happenings at the time of Christ and his writings provide further verification.

There is a lot more, but I am tired of talking to someone who will never change their attitude in a million years. Besides which you have no respect for me, so what's the point.

And I'm sure that those who follow other religions would say the same about yours. All religions are man made, how could they be anything other? And why should your religion be more true than theirs? I've noticed you getting very distressed at my logically-supported statement that the Bible is an inconsistent text of fiction, probably written to some political agenda from archaic times, but I haven't really noticed you give any convincing defense of it. Yet you feel free to make this statement about other religions, can you not see some inconsistency here in your own beliefs?
Just study it so that you can make an informed comment instead of all this sniping.

I have no respect for you because you are unable to produce a logical argument and resort to such intelligent and well thought out arguments as 'you are wrong'.

People contemporary to the period probably fabricated the religion as a means of controlling the population and building patriotic ties. This is a well documented use of religion through history. You could equally well argue that people contemporary to the period would not have allowed the Koran to be read out if it were a tissue of lies, and yet you have already accused the opposing text of being just that. My attitude to christ is not hostile, it is that he either never existed or was a normal man.

If you were able to present any evidence to support your views I would be happy to listen to them, I choose to base my opinions on evidence. However, 'I am right, you are wrong, the bible is right, you are wrong' is not an argument which is going to change my or anyone elses views on anything.

can you not see some inconsistency here in your own beliefs?
I see inconstancy in other religions.

As for the rest, I give up, you go on and on belittling everything, don't you think you ought to have a little respect for other peoples beliefs whatever they are. Thanks.

That one took a lot of thought and I'm not sure if I managed to get down in writing everything that I was trying to say, does this make sense to you phanerothyme?

It makes sense, yes. But however remote the possibility, you must accept that God can exist. Whether God exists or not has yet to be established in science, but the possibility cannot be excluded. Even Dawkins himself accepts this. (although it doesn't crop up much, as you might expect). Even your base axioms, causality, linear time etc, break down with the most accurate physical model of the universe thus devised/revealed.

Where does the beauty come from in mathematics? Is that a human invention, a culturally conditioned idea?

Or what about mathematical miracles?

I've never seen a circle. I've seen lots of rough approximations and some really bad ones, but I've never seen a real one. Yet I know they exist.... don't they?

And how come some of the biggest contributors to science have been religious men (and women)? (especially to genetics!).

I feel you are all taking the option of using Graham as an Aunt Sally (to be fair he courts it) but missing the opportunity to do a bit of qualitative analysis of the two narratives of christianity and rationality, and where they diverge and converge. At least that way we all stand a better chance of contributing in a meaningful way without the bad tempered gainsaying of the others position.

Besides, I think we're discussing the relative merits of the reductionist, causal, rational worldview, and the irrational, numinous and holistic worldview. And whatever falls in between. Not whether god actually exists or not. That's a given, whichever side you're coming at it from.

I think in the modern world religion has become seen as something "mystical" whereas in more primitive societies it was (and is in some cases) a simple fact of life that things beyond our control are played out by spirits or gods.

I suppose to all intents and purposes they may as well be, because if something is outside your control it makes no difference to you that there may be a rational scientific explanation.

There is nothing unique about religion in people not wanting to understand what causes things in their life - I see the same in people at work, they have no interest in how the wider business causes the difficulties in their job. I suppose what I'm trying to say is "religion offers simple answers" - but obviously if I put it like that some of our religious friends might get upset.

I feel you are all taking the option of using Graham as an Aunt Sally (to be fair he courts it) but missing the opportunity to do a bit of qualitative analysis of the two narratives of christianity and rationality, and where they diverge and converge. At least that way we all stand a better chance of contributing in a meaningful way without the bad tempered gainsaying of the others position.

I wouldn't personally have chosen the debate to go on in that fashion, but he keeps coming back for more.

It makes sense, yes. But however remote the possibility, you must accept that God can exist. Whether God exists or not has yet to be established in science, but the possibility cannot be excluded. Even Dawkins himself accepts this. (although it doesn't crop up much, as you might expect).

I accept that there is a possibility, there are plenty of things yet to be explained in this Universe and I'm perfectly willing to believe that God, however that entity is defined, plays a part in the unexplained.

Where does the beauty come from in mathematics? Is that a human invention, a culturally conditioned idea?

Or what about mathematical miracles?

As for mathematics - I don't know. The whole Universe as it is seems an incredibly unlikely thing to happen... but then it's not surprising that everything has happened in this Universe in a way that supports the formation of life, as we wouldn't be here observing it otherwise. Statistically, this makes me suspect that either it's just a fluke, there are many Universes, or there is some grand underlying reason that this one is the way it is - for example God.

It does seem possible though that the beauty in mathematics comes from the fact that it is completely logical by nature and allows no room for irrationality, so its beauty in fact stems from the fact that logic is not self-contradictory even when extended to the lengths of a mathematical treatise. Also, the amount of possibilities that mathematics offers elicits the probability that some of these possibilities will have an aesthetic appeal while others do not.

And how come some of the biggest contributors to science have been religious men (and women)? (especially to genetics!).

Because at the points when said men and women (e.g. Gregor Mendel) made their discoveries, religion was the best explanation for the world and was more firmly established during childhood and through communities - I doubt there were all that many atheists at all. Also, the support given to these people by those following the same religion probably gave them enough free time to conduct experiments e.g. the pea plants, as did the quiet church/temple sort of environments.

In todays world however, one study has shown an inverse correlation between scientific prominence and frequency of religious beliefs - I believe I posted a link to this near the start of this thread. Edit: Found it. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...4313a0_fs.html

There is nothing unique about religion in people not wanting to understand what causes things in their life - I see the same in people at work, they have no interest in how the wider business causes the difficulties in their job. I suppose what I'm trying to say is "religion offers simple answers" - but obviously if I put it like that some of our religious friends might get upset.
I think religion offers the right answers. I also think a Christian is more likely to be concerned for the well being of the company he works for and I am sure they will be diligent and conscientious in their work. The same probably for people of other faiths. I was working only for a day with a group of four Muslims and I was so impressed by their work.

I wouldn't personally have chosen the debate to go on in that fashion, but he keeps coming back for more.
Because you keep saying things about Christianity that are not true. They come from your imagination. Perhaps you ought to give your source like you do for scientific matters instead of your opinion stated as fact.

I have no respect for you because you are unable to produce a logical argument and resort to such intelligent and well thought out arguments as 'you are wrong'.
To be fair, from what I understand of what Grahame wrote. He was merely being the devil's advocate. Since you are so insistent in putting down Christianty, he was also merely putting down Science too.

As I said before. Anything and everything can be believed. Whether it is religion or science. Grahame said to 'prove' things to him with regards to evolution. He did not mean this literally, but more of a comparison to religion. Since we always ask to 'prove' religion, then why can we not equally accept that science can be asked to be proved too ?

They are both believable only because we accept a certain level of truth in them. We accept in science that atoms and molecules exist. They are the fundamental basics. In Christianty, we accept that the bible existed, and that it was based on 8 or so scriptures (I only learnt of this in the recent Da Vinci Code saga). Of which described a man (Jesus?) doing all sorts of healing things. Basically, many written text cross-references itself, and this proves historically there was a man, who DID help others. This cannot be lied about. Since both have basic fundamental building blocks to build a belief on. Then I don't see why is any more acceptable than the other ?

I think this was the kind of point Grahame was trying to make.

For what it's worth. I really enjoyed reading this thread, esp just now from page 12 onwards. :) Respect to all posters who have given their input in terms of knowledge and logical debate.

KenH/Jamiscle: I pondered on this when I was a kid, learning A-level physics. How come we can never find anything new, and discover anything new ? Was my knowledge limited ? If I was to discover something new, do I have to prove something from the basic foundation up ? The answer is 'No'. Science evolves and moves, by accepting the basic foundation building blocks. A molecule is a molecule. An atom is an atom. If we don't believe these basic things, then we don't have anything to base science on. i.e. one does not believe in science. But if u know the basics, u will see science work everyday. Your walking dynamics, how your body digests, how you sweat. How a car moves...etc.

Yes, when given medicines and wotnots. We may feel that it won't work, but if we take time out, and think about our health and monitor our diets, and history. Then we sure do believe that eating healthily works. It may take some time, but it works. Or taking a simple paracetamol will stop the pain. The same can be said for medicine. Obviously the well tested medicines will of course be used more often. Be glad that in the UK, we have a strict control over drug testing and approval. We are not like the US. US maybe more 'forefront', but at the expense of its patients. In the UK, this is not the same, which is better for its citizens. I know that a lot of drugs that are available over the counter in the US are not the same in the UK. Be glad that we're not a 'druggie' nation.

Yes, of course some of it works. But does all of it? Let's say that you had cancer- you might be fine and then take chemotherapy, which makes you quite sick. Did you actually have cancer, or was it the treatment that weakened you? You simply have to have faith that the medical establishment's diagnosis is correct. We're just not taught to question doctors in our culture, but they are certainly the sons of privilege.

Yes, well there is a lot of truth in what you say and I am afraid many religions are man made, and sorry to say are false. I studied most of the major ones a long time ago, but if you study the Bible I am sure you will find all the answers to your questions in there.

not really. it will tell me based on christianity, but does it explain why we have so many religions, starting at different times. why so many diseases if god exists?

As I said before. Anything and everything can be believed. Whether it is religion or science. Grahame said to 'prove' things to him with regards to evolution. He did not mean this literally, but more of a comparison to religion. Since we always ask to 'prove' religion, then why can we not equally accept that science can be asked to be proved too ?

They are both believable only because we accept a certain level of truth in them. We accept in science that atoms and molecules exist. They are the fundamental basics. In Christianty, we accept that the bible existed, and that it was based on 8 or so scriptures (I only learnt of this in the recent Da Vinci Code saga). Of which described a man (Jesus?) doing all sorts of healing things. Basically, many written text cross-references itself, and this proves historically there was a man, who DID help others. This cannot be lied about. Since both have basic fundamental building blocks to build a belief on. Then I don't see why is any more acceptable than the other ?

I think this was the kind of point Grahame was trying to make.

Ok, first of all Bago please don't take any of this personally, I'm just in debating mode right now.

The difference between asking for proof for evolution and proof for religion lies in that I was able to offer supporting evidence to counterargue against his objections whereas he was unable to do so in response to mine. In other words, evolution has proof while religion does not.

I'm not arguing that the bible did not exist, to do so would be ludicrous. But the fact that the bible states things did happen does not mean that those things did happen - seeing them happen would prove this, but no one has. I argue that the bible just like any other book could quite easily have been written by humans, based on human concerns, that this is rationally the overwhelming probability and that there is no observable proof for the Christian or any other theology. Perhaps jesus did exist, and perhaps he was a nice man. So what?

Saying 'everyone's probably right' and 'lets tolerate others' is a very easy line to take, it means you'll never ever get into conflict with anyone and will probably be popular. That's a personal choice that rationally probably makes more sense than it does to provoke conflict as I am doing. It doesn't mean that everybody's right.

The answer to any other debate in the world would be found through logic and I don't see why this one should be any different.

Just study it so that you can make an informed comment instead of all this sniping.

I'm sorry Grahame, but I can't see an oppportunity like this go to waste...

I was brought up on that, & the bible is so full of holes that it's unbelievable, I'd spotted quite a few of them by the time I was 8, & quite frankly people blindly & literally believing crap like that without actually thinking it through has caused more crap in this world than most other things. And you ask someone else to go & read it?

Fair enough there are some sensible rules, like not killing people, which are generally in most holy books, but other than that it's so full of contradictions & absurdities it's, well, absurd.

I mean, really, have you never spotted anything remotely contradictory?

Yes, of course some of it works. But does all of it? Let's say that you had cancer- you might be fine and then take chemotherapy, which makes you quite sick. Did you actually have cancer, or was it the treatment that weakened you? You simply have to have faith that the medical establishment's diagnosis is correct. We're just not taught to question doctors in our culture, but they are certainly the sons of privilege.
You must have cancerous cells somewhere first, otherwise u can sue them for malpractice by giving a patience chemo without the cause, and that is not something a Dr would want on his reputation. Chemo does weaken u. Unfortunately, the medical world works in a way that cures the immediate problems, and not necessarily be a foolproof way to prevent anything further problems to be created. It's like saying, if u pull out one tooth, you'd expect it to be a complete set. No it won't be. You can still eat, but it may not function exactly as it was before, depending on which tooth it was.

I can tell u this now that there is no certainty in any operations. As a science grad, there's statistics that works out a percentage of certainty. Then there's other areas which may go wrong. That's how medicine works. It's like a machine. It can work and be efficient, because it's been used many times over. There's still a chance that it may not go right, or work in any particular time.

Actually, we *can* question the Drs. It is why they are there. Not everyone take the opportunity to ask. Cos it is their job to explain things to you so you know where u stand. Yes, not all doctors have all knowledge in all areas. This is the problem. Hence there are 'specialists' and general practitioners.

You must have cancerous cells somewhere first, otherwise u can sue them for malpractice by giving a patience chemo without the cause, and that is not something a Dr would want on his reputation.
.

How do you know that the cells are cancerous? :-)

Crayfish: Ok, first of all Bago please don't take any of this personally, I'm just in debating mode right now.
No, I won't. As long as you don't diss my family or myself. I don't care. lol... I'm open minded when it comes to such religious / philosophical debates. Yes, I can see that you're on a roll ! I will stil retain my views regardless.

Though for the sake of debate...

I'm not arguing that the bible did not exist, to do so would be ludicrous. But the fact that the bible states things did happen does not mean that those things did happen - seeing them happen would prove this, but no one has. I argue that the bible just like any other book could quite easily have been written by humans, based on human concerns, that this is rationally the overwhelming probability and that there is no observable proof for the Christian or any other theology. Perhaps jesus did exist, and perhaps he was a nice man. So what?
Well, then you have to ask yourself. Do you belief in history. If someone see something, and documented it. Why would they lie ? What do they gain out of it ? Also, why do *so* many people documented about the same things that happened at the same time ? What are their reasons ? I'm sure that any historian will dig for such info. There are a lot of things said in the bible which correlate to the historical geographic locations too. Science can back some of this up. I believe the scriptures were discovered quite late, and they are probably being preserved right now.

Historical artefacts proved this. Like the Turin shroud is one of them. I think they used carbon-dating to test out how old that piece of cloth was. I'm not sure whether it's been disintegrated in the last 5+ years now though.

Actually, just how much do u know about Christianty ?

How do you know that the cells are cancerous? :-)
LOL..... Well, cos a microscope would tell u this. And, a piece of the cancerous cells would be taken of that particular area of the body, and tested again and again in the labs to prove this. (I have a cousin that works in the NHS labs, so I kinda know their testing procedures too. :P)

And if the NHS gets it wrong, then all hell would break loose, and the media would have a field day. So getting it 'right' is important.

Of course, if a cell is not a cell, and a new theory or hypothesis are created with regards to these fundamental building blocks. Then the world would be in turmoil ! The biomedical field would never be the same. Pharmacuetical companies would lose money. Their drugs would be discarded. *gassssps* :D

I think religion offers the right answers. I also think a Christian is more likely to be concerned for the well being of the company he works for and I am sure they will be diligent and conscientious in their work. The same probably for people of other faiths. I was working only for a day with a group of four Muslims and I was so impressed by their work.


So what you're basically saying is cannot have compassion for other people on the level of a christian because i do not accept the existance of God?

Since when has morality ever been tied into faith? I am insulted you actually think that people care more than I do, regardless of who they are, simply because they are relgious.

How about you give me some proof you a d every other christian cares more than I do?

Perhaps the term 'holier-than-thou' really does have some real world examples of people who think faith makes right.

Wilf

Evolution have prove, but religion does not ?

Evolution like historical dinosaurs have old bones to prove their existence.

Religion like Christianity (I won't go into other religions for the time being) have historical artefacts like the old scriptures, and Turin shroud (and various other objects, I think), that prove their existence.

Evolution like the Darwin theory ties together the existence of these old bones, fossils etc.

The ideology of Christianity ties in the historical existence of people, scriptures, descriptions and geographic locations.

Again, if we follow Grahame's argument, then what is the difference between the two ?

Evolution have prove, but religion does not ?

Evolution like historical dinosaurs have old bones to prove their existence.

Religion like Christianity (I won't go into other religions for the time being) have historical artefacts like the old scriptures, and Turin shroud (and various other objects, I think), that prove their existence.

Evolution like the Darwin theory ties together the existence of these old bones, fossils etc.

The ideology of Christianity ties in the historical existence of people, scriptures, descriptions and geographic locations.

Again, if we follow Grahame's argument, then what is the difference between the two ?


their ideology relies on something though that is required by itsvery essence to be unidentifiable and unprovable. Evolution is acceptednot as fact but as the best working theory we have at the moment.

If something came along tomorrow and was proven to be the missing link of evolution, it wouldn't refute the existance of God, which can never be proved or disproved. All it would do is further support the science ehind evolution.

I fail to see what kinda of problem people have with that?

Wilf

LOL..... Well, cos a microscope would tell u this. And, a piece of the cancerous cells would be taken of that particular area of the body, and tested again and again in the labs to prove this. (I have a cousin that works in the NHS labs, so I kinda know their testing procedures too. :P)

And if the NHS gets it wrong, then all hell would break loose, and the media would have a field day. So getting it 'right' is important.
D

You know what? A microscope would not tell me this. I haven't studied the subject. Further, I have no idea what sample is being tested, and whether it is even mine. You say that your cousin works in the lab- does she pinch the skin, get the blood, and physically walk to the lab? No, she does not. She is dependent on the system to give her a numbered sample. Someone somewhere controls that process, but its not her.

The media can only have a field day if enough people are aware of what is going on and actually complain. The biomedical establishment have a stranglehold on this kind of thing- they control life and death in so many respects. Look at the number of people that are sent to mental institutions on a regular basis. Once drugged, they have virtually no awareness of who they are and what is happening. If they complain? Well, that's what electroshock is for.

Its pretty dangerous just to take life for granted. We are heavily socialized to believe in the medical system. To think that such a system is bad as well as good is unfathomable for most people- just as it was with the priests of the past centuries. You have to have quite the ability to question things. Its no surprise that even the Queen depends largely on homeopathy.

Plus, the system is a shadowy grey- the potential is there for rampant abuse, but sometimes it genuinely helps people.

As to what people get out of such evil? Don't be naive. Money. Power. Intellectual and social dominance. The ability to silence dissent. The upper classes can continue to dominate the lower classes. Race based politicking.

Sound familiar? :P

I'm sorry Grahame, but I can't see an oppportunity like this go to waste...

I was brought up on that, & the bible is so full of holes that it's unbelievable, I'd spotted quite a few of them by the time I was 8, & quite frankly people blindly & literally believing crap like that without actually thinking it through has caused more crap in this world than most other things. And you ask someone else to go & read it?

Fair enough there are some sensible rules, like not killing people, which are generally in most holy books, but other than that it's so full of contradictions & absurdities it's, well, absurd.

I mean, really, have you never spotted anything remotely contradictory?
If you let me know the holes you found I am happy to look at them. Although that may be a little difficult because I understand a hole to be a void or an empty space with nothing there, a little like God who we cannot see so the illogical conclusion is that he doesn’t exist. But if we look at the surroundings of the hole we can see there is one and it is the surrounding evidence that can tell us what we want to know.

I think searching for God is like a voyage of discovery and it is easy to get lost on the way. It makes it doubly hard when he is ‘invisible’ and this is why people say there is no God.

The theme of the thread seem to be the same as it always has been down the ages, people say show me God and I will believe. In other words people’s minds are made up, they have closed their minds to the possibility of God. If you like you can call it narrow-mindedness.

A Christian will look at the order in the natural world, they may look through a microscope and find another world perhaps even more beautiful than the one they can see with their eyes and a Christian is sufficiently open minded to say ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than were ever dreamed of” The logic being that the evidence points to something as yet unknown. We know that new discoveries are being made, we only have five senses and there may be things we are unaware of and that are only just being discovered. It is hard for us to grasp that space may go on for ever and ever without coming to an end. It is hard to understand that there has always been time before the world began and will never end. Jesus said “I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end” so there was this concept, the same as Jesus said, “as far as the east is from the west” because it is never ending and a Christian with his open mind will look at all the evidence and say “there has to be more to this than we can see, there must be a God.”

All I can say is to try and look at the world not with human eyes, but look at the world with an open and informed mind and with an understanding that can only come from reading the best text book on the subject there is, the Bible. And just as anyone studying for a degree has to work hard in their studies, the same applies in all fields of human endeavour. You won't find the answers on a plate but that is what makes it so worthwhile.

Yes Cyclone the people who believed the world was flat were those who were influenced by Darwin, the evolutionists. They were wrong. You follow the same teaching and you are also wrong.

Wow, you are capable of some really huge leaps of reasoning.

The people who believed the earth was flat (if you're quotes are correct) didn't exist. You really should understand what you are quoting before you use it to tell me i'm wrong. The quotes say that the myth was fabricated in order to discredit religion. Not that darwin believed it :loopy:

I see inconstancy in other religions.

As for the rest, I give up, you go on and on belittling everything, don't you think you ought to have a little respect for other peoples beliefs whatever they are. Thanks.

how do you justify demanding this respect for your religion when one page ago you declared that all the others were 'man made' and wrong. What's the quote about doing unto others? (Although i'm sure you can find an alternative quote that says something about burning and stoning everyone who's not a christian).

I think in the modern world religion has become seen as something "mystical" whereas in more primitive societies it was (and is in some cases) a simple fact of life that things beyond our control are played out by spirits or gods.

I suppose to all intents and purposes they may as well be, because if something is outside your control it makes no difference to you that there may be a rational scientific explanation.

There is nothing unique about religion in people not wanting to understand what causes things in their life - I see the same in people at work, they have no interest in how the wider business causes the difficulties in their job. I suppose what I'm trying to say is "religion offers simple answers" - but obviously if I put it like that some of our religious friends might get upset.

it does make a difference if there's a rational explanation. it allows you to make predictions based on the model you've got.
So instead of saying, god is angry that's why the volcano erupts, you say, oh look, predictions say we'll have an eruption in 6 months (still nothing you can do about that), but what you can do, is up and leg it before you get toasty.

I'll come back to this thread when I get to work.

The theme of the thread seem to be the same as it always has been down the ages, people say show me God and I will believe. In other words people’s minds are made up, they have closed their minds to the possibility of God. If you like you can call it narrow-mindedness.



You're wrong. That's not narrow-mindedness, it's reasoning based on evidence.

Evolution have prove, but religion does not ?

Evolution like historical dinosaurs have old bones to prove their existence.

Religion like Christianity (I won't go into other religions for the time being) have historical artefacts like the old scriptures, and Turin shroud (and various other objects, I think), that prove their existence.

Evolution like the Darwin theory ties together the existence of these old bones, fossils etc.

The ideology of Christianity ties in the historical existence of people, scriptures, descriptions and geographic locations.

Again, if we follow Grahame's argument, then what is the difference between the two ?

I don't think anyone is doubting the existance of religion, but all the historical artefacts prove is as you say that the religion exists and has done for some time. It doesn't prove that the religion is right about anything, or that it wasn't all made up by people, probably with an ulterior motive.

I'm with Cyclone on this one and was just going to point this out myself. Dinosaur bones prove dinosaurs existed. The bible proves the bible exists. Terry Pratchett's The Light Fantastic proves that book exists.

What the latter two examples don't prove is that the content of those books have any foundation in reality.

I helped my young sister go through a workbook on basic logic the other day(well, that's unfair, she did it pretty much all herself) and they had names for each of these logical misconceptions we're seeing here. I'll dig it out some time and remind myself what they were called.

The major piece of evidence I've seen so far presented by Bago and Grahame for Christianity is that lots of people thought it existed, and why would they lie?

Ok, logical problems with this: Lots of people still think it exists, and my whole argument is that their perception is logically flawed. I'm completely prepared to believe that past peoples with much less education and much less evidence against it could have flawed perceptions.

What would people stand to gain from lying? Politics. Population control. The whole bible is intended to put people into a state of fear - work hard and respect authority or the Devil will eat your soul. Fearful people are easier to control. There's a similar situation with the overblown terrorism propaganda in America today. Look at the success of Christianity in extorting money from believers throughout time. They were on to a good thing and still are.

The next one: People and geographical places. I don't doubt these people and places existed, I just doubt that they were mythological in the biblical sense. I don't doubt that ninjas existed in feudal japan, I just doubt that the stories where they are capable of flight and have the strength of 10 men are correct.

Inconsistencies and holes in the bible. Here's the top result from google, I have no doubt there are thousands more inconsistencies. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/inconsistencies.html

Also, the bible was actually a composite piece from writings on several previous religions including the Hebrew and Zoroastrianistic theisms, as well as many more minor folk religions - each time a different author tells the same story in different books of the bible, it's different and includes references to different local gods and heroes.

Oh and I forgot, the shroud http://skepdic.com/shroud.html doesn't sound great to me

Surely, that's just a psychological state of being ? We 'think' a God exist within our hearts. We believe what little evidences and facts are out there to support this.

Crayfish: The major piece of evidence I've seen so far presented by Bago and Grahame for Christianity is that lots of people thought it existed, and why would they lie?
First of all. Let me clarify this much. I am an aethist. I'm not a Christian. I do believe in science. I may have a liking for Buddhism, or Taosim (philosophy) than anything. I partake here in this discussion not to take sides, but to further the discussion of religion. So far, I do find it intriguing with the number of points made. Show me the reasons and logic, and I'll accept it.

No, I did not say that "because lots of people believe it, therefore they are not lying". I have not said this throughout my posts. You have started the thread by stating that 5.1 billion people can be wrong. That is a point already in your mind, but not mine. I don't care how many people believe in something. I'm going by the facts. Which is that, historical artefacts existed. Dinosaur bones existed. At the end of the day, it is still a theory, an ideology which binds these evidences into a bigger existence/idea/belief.

What the latter two examples don't prove is that the content of those books have any foundation in reality.
Even though I may not take in Grahame's religious belief, I can see where he is coming from with this. Dinosaur bones have no foundation in reality. They are just bones. What and how does it impact 'reality' ? Real life are now accepted with an understanding that it is based on derivatives of fundamental scientific principles, theories, hypotheses.

You may think that what u see, touch, hear in this day and age is scientifically linked. Well, (and I guess Grahame's post reminded me of this point), that what he sees, touch, hear, feel is God-related. Maybe in his mind, all that exist in this real life now, are God's creations. Whereas you may think, all that exist in real life now are based on scientific principles.

No. It's nothing to do with thinking. It's nothing to do with the word 'god'.
Then a physiological state then ? It's like when u meditate, your mind is very settled that u are aware of existence of other simple things. Maybe believing in God, you see and view the world through 'his' eyes, and therefore is happy within yourself that you are a part of something bigger cos everything u see is a reminder of that thing.

Even though I may not take in Grahame's religious belief, I can see where he is coming from with this. Dinosaur bones have no foundation in reality. They are just bones. What and how does it impact 'reality' ? Real life are now accepted with an understanding that it is based on derivatives of fundamental scientific principles, theories, hypotheses.


How does the existence of the bible justify its contents? Does this mean that the light fantastic's contents are also justified by its existence?

The conclusion drawn from dinosaur bones is that there were dinosaurs. They do have a foundation in reality, I don't understand what you mean by this. The conclusion you seem to be trying to draw from the bible is that all the things detailed in it happened, which is no more logical than believing the events from any other work of fiction.

You may think that what u see, touch, hear in this day and age is scientifically linked. Well, (and I guess Grahame's post reminded me of this point), that what he sees, touch, hear, feel is God-related. Maybe in his mind, all that exist in this real life now, are God's creations. Whereas you may think, all that exist in real life now are based on scientific principles.

Maybe that is what he hears, sees etc.

What a lunatic or someone on an LSD trip may hear and see is an army of pink yet evil teddy bears. This doesn't make them real.

Jamiscle: Good point. Touche. :P

I guess it boils down to how much you trust the other people and what they say. It is odd. Maybe it's 'blind faith' to trust that other person.

I guess at the end of the day, if there are no laws and order, then there wouldn't be such 'blind faith' and trust within humans. Within a society. I mean, why would anybody trust that I won't hurt them ? Or cheat them ? I like to think that people have ethics, and commonalities which means that one cannot be cheated by another, if basic understandings are accepted. If this was not accepted, then how do builders or contracts or anything contractual works out ? There would be no law and order if everybody were as cynical and as paranoid about it all.

Its pretty dangerous just to take life for granted. We are heavily socialized to believe in the medical system. To think that such a system is bad as well as good is unfathomable for most people- just as it was with the priests of the past centuries. You have to have quite the ability to question things. Its no surprise that even the Queen depends largely on homeopathy.
I personally think that we must accept a certain level of knowledge to be 'as is'. Otherwise we would all be too extreme in thoughts and be paranoid (I take this as against the thoughts of masses), and it breaks down the foundation of medical beliefs.

Yes, it can be quite scary and it is worrying not to know what is happening to your body, and what drugs will and won't work. It is also frustrating. I can relate to this because I once had to explain and reassure my mother when she was diagnosed as diabetic. How, why and when her blood sugar drops means a danger to her life. Eating certain food type increases her blood sugar-level. IF these info were not dotted around in the Internet, and if I did not believe the Dr. Then imagine the worry and paranoia one goes through. Of so many factors affecting her 'illness'. She wouldn't know that eating a sweet may kill her. (Ok, extreme scenario.) If she was strongly religious, she may believe that it was an act of God. She may not necessarily know that controlling her food intake, and keep her sugar level steady, and do regular exercise will prolong her life.

My point is that, we have advanced as humans, and we have to accept a certain level of medical knowledge 'as it is'. We're not in old civilisations whereby the Witch Doctor may have the power, along with the Chief, to govern the people any more. In the Western society, the structures are different now. The medical profession cross-references itself and is checked and kept inline over several countries.

crayfish: The conclusion drawn from dinosaur bones is that there were dinosaurs. They do have a foundation in reality, I don't understand what you mean by this. The conclusion you seem to be trying to draw from the bible is that all the things detailed in it happened, which is no more logical than believing the events from any other work of fiction.

-------------------
Maybe that is what he hears, sees etc.

What a lunatic or someone on an LSD trip may hear and see is an army of pink yet evil teddy bears. This doesn't make them real.
You have a nice way to put your point across. I think you've already pointed out that you cannot fanthom or accept a God, basically.

Even though, I cannot accept the idea of a central God, I don't disbelieve the things that surround and support the ideology of a God.

I'm with Cyclone on this one and was just going to point this out myself. Dinosaur bones prove dinosaurs existed. The bible proves the bible exists. Terry Pratchett's The Light Fantastic proves that book exists.

What the latter two examples don't prove is that the content of those books have any foundation in reality.

I believe that a Christian thinks that all that had happened within the Bible were true stories or events that had happened in history. (I think this is right, but I'm open to correction.) I just recall that there's a news headline recently about discovering how Jesus walked on water. The scientific community proved this phenomena.

The bible points out the geographical location of these events. I think it was around Jerusalum or somewhere like that.

You may look at the bible as a story book. But others may look at the bible as an encyclopedia. Of documenting historical events.

Wow, you are capable of some really huge leaps of reasoning.

The people who believed the earth was flat (if you're quotes are correct) didn't exist. You really should understand what you are quoting before you use it to tell me i'm wrong. The quotes say that the myth was fabricated in order to discredit religion. Not that darwin believed it :loopy:

The myth that the earth was flat was fabricated by Darwinians in order to discredit religion and thereby further the cause of creationism. They succeeded and you and crayfish to name two have been taken in by their ridiculous evolutionary theory.:loopy:

Bago!!
I am shocked my friend, are you supposing I believe in God? I hope not.
Wot !? :D
Are u not admitting to this ? Hehe.

6) The more you try to explain what it is you're talking about, the more you lose the true meaning of what it is you're trying to convey. So it's best to use no words, just a smile.
This bit I do get. Taosim is a bit like that. Undefinable, unexplainable, but the more u think about it, the more u understand it. It's not solid. It's not an object. It's not an action.

It's the way of life, and a state of being, is how I see it. Have I been brainwashed? Possibly. Does it keep me in peace within myself ? Most of the time.

Which makes me think, isn't any religion, philosophy or ideology have the same fundamental basic common attributes ? That's my science head on, analysing and rationalising, and reasoning.

how do you justify demanding this respect for your religion when one page ago you declared that all the others were 'man made' and wrong. What's the quote about doing unto others? (Although i'm sure you can find an alternative quote that says something about burning and stoning everyone who's not a christian).
People have different 'gods' as you know. Some are nothing more than a wooden idol other gods are wealth and power for example. Clearly these are not gods in the true sense although people worship these things. All of them are either inanimate objects or if they were once living, they are now dead, why? because they are mortal man. There is only one living God.

The myth that the earth was flat was fabricated by Darwinians in order to discredit religion and thereby further the cause of creationism. They succeeded and you and crayfish to name two have been taken in by their ridiculous evolutionary theory.:loopy:

Er it was actually fabricated by victorian high society to prove how much more adcvanced they were in terms of industry that 200 year previously.

I fail to see how this is Darwinians, who aren't even a faction except in your eyes.

Wilf

You're wrong. That's not narrow-mindedness, it's reasoning based on evidence.
You cannot prove a negative.

You cannot prove a negative.

You can't prove anything, you won't even adress the question.

All you resort to is 'You are wrong. The bible is right'

Can't you see how this isn't a stance in an argument it's just an outright refutal. You can't debate with someone like yourself who just says they are right and doesn't justify why.

Wilf